Late last, night just as I was heading to bed I received an email from Twitter asking me to reset my password. At first, I thought it might be a spam or spoofed email. But, confirmation of the compromise came when I checked Techmeme.
Twitter has also released a blog confirming that they have been compromised.
This week, we 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 – for approximately 250,000 users.
As a precautionary security measure, we have reset passwords and revoked session tokens for these accounts. If your account was one of them, you will have recently received (or will shortly) an email from us at the address associated with your Twitter account notifying you that you will need to create a new password. Your old password will not work when you try to log in to Twitter.
The final paragraph was the one that really concerned me
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. 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.
So, if you have received an email today from Twitter, please ensure you change your password immediately. You may also want to check your spam folder, just in case the Twitter password reset email is lurking there!
