Twitter into deeper trouble, 250000 accounts hacked

Twitter on Friday confirmed it had become the latest victim of cyber crime with around 2,50,000 of its 200 million accounts hacked.  Twitter accepted that hackers may have gained access to information to the above 2,50,000 accounts.

This is second killer punch for Twitter after its 'Vine' troubles.  The company's blog article dated 1st Feb, 2013, stated that the hackers had gained access to a minuscule percentage of its users  and data may have been compromised.  But it also agreed that it had

"detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords"

The blog further goes on to state that 

"The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked. For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users. "

There is a strong possibility that this crime is also linked to the  Java security loop hole.  The Java problem seems to have become a full blown security issue for all companies dealing in classified information like personal details, email, passwords etc.

US Department of Homeland has already advised users and companies alike to disable Java.  I have also given a complete tutorial with links for disabling Java.  Please click the link below to read it.  Apple, earlier on Thursday had disabled Java from Mac computer connected to Internet.  

The security firms are working overtime to solve this issue and get the security layers back to normal.

Please disable your Java as instructed here.  Also please change your Twitter Passwords as soon as possible.  If it is feasible change passwords of everything that uses Java engine.

Please post your comments and suggestions.

Vijay Prabhu