TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Recently a hacker claimed to have managed to break into the data of 400 million users of Twitter accounts demanded compensation from Twitter CEO Elon Musk. He provided sample data as evidence and claimed that it included emails as well as phone numbers of celebrities, politicians and others.

How did the hacker able to obtain personal data

The hacker, known to be a member of the breach forum named Ryushi, is said to have obtained the data by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Twitter system. Hackers stated that personal data consists of influential people's emails and phone numbers of emails and phone numbers of influential people.

Hacker wants to sell the data to Musk

Reportedly, the hacker tried to reach an agreement with Twitter CEO Elon Musk to compensate for the data to avoid lawsuits against the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

"Twitter or Elon Musk, if you're reading this, you are already risking a GDPR fine of 5.4 million breaches imagining the fine of 400 million user breach source. Your best option to avoid paying US$276 million in GDPR breach fines like Facebook did (due to 553 million users being scrapped) is to buy this data exclusively,” reads the message claiming to be from the hacker.

Ireland's DPC investigates Twitter data leak

The news emerges after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) launched an investigation into a Twitter data leak that affected more than 5.4 million users worldwide.

"DPC, after considering the information provided by TIC on this matter, as to date, on the opinion that one or more of the condition of the GDPR and/or the Act itself may have been, and/or are being violated in connection to personal data of Twitter users," the statement read, announced by the Irish Data Protection Commission on December 23.

As reported by the bleeping computer, the previous breach was discovered in late November and the data was stolen when the hacker exploited an API vulnerability that was being fixed by Twitter in January.

Pompompurin, who owns the breach forum, said that another set of data from 1.4 million Twitter account profiles that's not for sale but only shared with a few people. Pompompurin is also reported to have offered escrow services for the sale.

MOH. HATTA MUARABAGJA | IMAJI LASAHIDO (INTERN)

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