Some users on the social media giant, Twitter, has been posting a warning email purportedly issued and sent by the company regarding possible state-sponsored security attacks.
Some of the Twitter users that were alerted are journalists, security researchers and programmers.
“As a precaution, we are alerting you that your Twitter account is one of a small group of accounts that may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors. We believe these actors (possibility associated with a government) may have been trying to obtain information such as email addresses, IP addresses and/or phone numbers,” the first paragraph of the email body said.
Moreover, Twitter has also included in the email that the users may take a look into using Tor, a service that maintains the privacy of the person using the web, while using social networks.
The Tor Project is a free software implementation of second-generation onion routing, a system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet.
It also suggested the users to Electronic Frontier Foundation’s guide to “Protecting Yourself on Social Networks.”
Twitter is being precautionary by sending the email as it explained that it has still no concrete evidence at the time being as to the accessed information. However, an in-depth investigation is currently going on.
It can be recalled that there has been numerous hacking occurrence in the last two quarters from business websites to government officials’ personal emails and accounts. In fact, according to International Business Times, this is not the first time that a social network company gave a warning to their users. Google has been warning users as early as 2012 of such state-sponsored attacks. Facebook has done the same in November wherein it gave warning to U.S. State Department personnel about targeted attacks of their accounts.
What do you think of these state-sponsored attacks? Can it be prevented?