Twitter warns it may have fallen victim to state-sponsored hack
Social networking platform Twitter has warned it may have fallen victim to a state-sponsored hack in which ‘state-sponsored actors’ tried to obtain the phone numbers, email addresses and IP addresses of a ‘small group of accounts’.
This would be the first time that such an attack has been suspected and was revealed in an email issued to users who may have been affected by the activity.
Amongst those to have received the notifications are cryptographers, security researchers, activists and journalists, although the predominant response from those affected was surprise and humour rather than anger.
Remember when "state-sponsored actors" meant the national performing-arts company doing Shakespeare in the park?
— Mark Wodrich (@markwo) December 12, 2015Previous security scares have centred around the Syrian Electronic Army which has a penchant for hijacking newspaper accounts in order to propagate fake news stories.