Social media is a very powerful medium and many people and companies use it frequently to share information as well as entertainment. When we see something on our feed, we assume it’s coming from the person we’re following.

Now it appears that over 55,000 Twitter accounts have been hacked by an anonymous source. According to AirDemon.net, the compromised accounts are available for public viewing on PasteBin and they provide links to the affected accounts. There’s actually so many accounts that the attackers had to use five separate PasteBin pages to house all of the data. It’s also unknown if these are the only affected Twitter accounts or if there are more that are being withheld by the intruders. Although many of the passwords are predictably weak, many of them are relatively complex. There is currently no word how the accounts were compromised.

While it appears that Twitter has already disabled many of the affected accounts, people frequently use the same passwords to access multiple sites and this breach could allow the attackers to compromise email accounts, banking sites, and message boards. We’d recommend that users be extra cautious opening attachments and clicking links, especially if you have a friend on the compromised list.

Posted: May 09, 2012 12:04 pm

Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/55000-twitter-accounts-hacked-passwords-revealed