Twitter and the Washington Post reveal discovery of cyber-attacks

Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users. The company reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising the affected users.

The Twitter attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of U.S. companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both newspapers reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

The Washington Post disclosed in an article published on its website that it was also the target of a sophisticated cyber-attack, which was discovered in 2011 and was first reported by an independent cyber security blog.

Washington Post spokeswoman, Kris Coratti, didn't offer any details including the duration of the attack or the origins. But according to sources that the newspaper quoted, who it said spoke on condition of anonymity, the intruders gained access as early as 2008 or 2009. According to the sources, Chinese hackers are also suspected.

China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics. The Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyber-attacks.

Twitter didn't provide any clues as to whether it believes that China was behind its hack. However, the blog post by the company's director of information security, Bob Lord, made clear that the hackers knew what they were doing. Lord said in the blog that the 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,” Lord said. “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.”

Reached on Saturday, Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser had no further comment.

Based on the few details released about the Twitter and Washington Post attacks it's hard to say whether Chinese hackers were involved, said Rich Mogull, CEO of Securosis, an independent security research and advisory firm. There are certain pieces of malicious software that are characteristic to Chinese hackers, he said, but “the problem is not enough has been made public.”

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