In an attempt to protect users that it feared were subject to a malicious hacker attack, Twitter has issued password-reset requests to all possibly affected accounts, the company wrote in a blog post Tuesday night.
Over the last five days, Twitter noticed a few accounts had a “sudden surge in followers." Believing the activity was odd, the company decided to push out password resets to all accounts that were following the suspicious users.
But after investigating the activities of those accounts, Twitter has found that many of their followers were subject to an intricate attack that might leave some open to data loss.
According to Twitter, an unidentified person has been building torrent sites -- places where Web users can download files from the Web -- for a number of years with the ultimate goal of exploiting users. After building the sites and establishing forums where users could discuss different topics, the person sold those pages to webmasters hoping to start their own download services.
Over the last five days, Twitter noticed a few accounts had a “sudden surge in followers." Believing the activity was odd, the company decided to push out password resets to all accounts that were following the suspicious users.
But after investigating the activities of those accounts, Twitter has found that many of their followers were subject to an intricate attack that might leave some open to data loss.
According to Twitter, an unidentified person has been building torrent sites -- places where Web users can download files from the Web -- for a number of years with the ultimate goal of exploiting users. After building the sites and establishing forums where users could discuss different topics, the person sold those pages to webmasters hoping to start their own download services.
