Twitter accounts hacked by sophisticated cyber attacks

In line with the recent surge in cyber attacks on online tech and media companies, Twitter became the latest victim of these with 250,000 of its user account passwords hacked.

Twitter came out immediately on its official blog with a statement by Bob Lord, "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 - for approximately 250,000 users." 

He also indicated that it was indeed the handiwork of a sophisticated cyber group, "This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked."

He also recommended turning off Java in browsers of computers and stated, "We also echo the advisory from the US Department of Homeland Security and security experts to encourage users to disable Java on their computers in their browsers."

Within the last two weeks, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have chronicled breaches of their systems, and Apple and Mozilla have turned off Java by default in their browsers.