Personal data of up to 40 crore Twitter accounts, including accဣounts of business figures, politicians, and government entities, is up for sale on the dark web, according to a report.
Israeli cyber-security firm Hudson Rock shared that a person is selling this on the darkꦍ web❀. The firm adds the claims of the person, called 'threat actor' in cyber-security parlance, having such data are "credible".
The report says the data was obtained by the seller in 💫early 2022.
What does the report say?
The Hudson Rock says that personal data incl💖udes phone numbers and emails o🐻f the users.
The screenshot of a chunk of the data shared by the Hudson Rock on Twitter shows some well-known public figures, such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, US Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr, and the Indian Ministry 🐲of Information and Broadcasting.
Some of the other well-known a✃ccounts seen in th﷽e screenshot are:
- US Department of Interior
- French Ministry of Justice
- World Health Organization
- SpaceX
- CBS
- China Daily
- Scott Morrison, former Australian Prime Minister
- Cara Delevigne, actor
- Piers Morgan, British broadcaster
Hudson Rock says the data was accessed in early 2022 and the seller has attempted to extort Tꦡwitter's owner Elon Musk.
"In the post, the threat actor claims the data was obtained in earl🦩y 2022 due to a vulnerability in Twitter, as well as attempting to extort El♓on Musk to buy the data or face GDPR lawsuits," reports Hudson Rock.
H🙈owever, it says it has not verified the claims in iಌts totality but it appears to be legitimate.
"At this stage it is not possible to fully verify that there are indeed 400,000,000 users in t��he database. From an independent vꦰerification the data itself appears to be legitimate and we will follow up with any developments," says Hudson Rock.
What is dark web?
The dark wꦇeb is the internet that's beyond the scope of search engines and cannot be searched normally.
You cannot access dark web through a UR✃L in a normal browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla 𒅌Firefox. It's also not accessible through search engines.
This is because all 'normal' websites that want themselves to be accessed by general users are "indexed" on search engines. Websi🐷tes not wanting to be found intentionally don't get indexed and have to be looked up through special softwares such as the Tor browser.
The internet that we access everyday through URLs or search engines like Google or Yahoo 📖is called "surface web" and the un-indexed, unsearchable websites and content beyond their scope are called &qu🍌ot;deep web". Dark web is a sub-set of deep web.
Though it's not always the case, but dark web is frequently used for criminal 🔥purp🎀oses.
"The dark internet 𒉰is designed to provide anonymity by keeping communication private through encryption and routing onl🍎ine content through multiple web servers," says cyber-security firm Avast.
Of illegal activities on dark web, Avast say🌌s, "The dark web is used for many illegal activities. It’s possible to buy and sell illegal drugs, malware, and prohibited content in darknet marketplaces. Some dark web commerce sites have dangerous chemicals and weapons for sale. Some hackers offer ransomware as a service...Hackers sell access to email accounts, social media profiles, or other information that can be used for identity theft."
