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Thousands of Twitter passwords exposed

2012-05-09 08:48 by
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Social network Twitter has launched an investigation after thousands of user names and passwords were exposed online. Most of the usernames and passwords copied into a string of five Pastebin posts on Monday are either duplicates or belong to blocked spammers, according to the micro-blogging site. A spokesman said it was in the process of resetting the passwords of compromised legitimate accounts.

"We are currently looking into the situation. In the meantime, we have pushed out password resets to accounts that may have been affected," Twitter spokesman Robert Weeks said. "For those who are concerned that their account may have been compromised, we suggest resetting your passwords and more in our Help Center."

"It's worth noting that, so far, we've discovered that the list of alleged accounts and passwords found on Pastebin consists of more than 20,000 duplicates, many spam accounts that have already been suspended, and many log-in credentials that do not appear to be linked (that is, the password and username are not actually associated with each other)," he said.

It is supposed that hackers slurped the data from a phishing website that tricked users into revealing their login details. The motives of the miscreants who shovelled the passwords onto Pastebin remain unclear. Airdemon, the site that broke news of the dump, suggested the dump is designed to highlight Twitter's supposed security shortcomings.

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