As no doubt some of you are aware, within the last few weeks, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the United States have had breaches of their systems by Chinese-based hackers. Also recently Twitter reported that approximately 250 000 Twitter accounts were compromised by the same attackers.
The attackers may have gained access to some user information, including usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords.
As a precautionary security measure, Twitter has reset passwords for these accounts. If your account was one of them, you will have recently received (or will shortly) an email from Twitter 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.
No doubt, Facebook will also be the target of this new Chinese-based attack next, as users often use the same password for both Twitter and Facebook.
This attack was not the work of amateurs, and experts not believe this was an isolated incident. The attack is extremely sophisticated, and it is possible that other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked.
However it is very important that you do NOT access Twitter by clicking on ANY links contained in ANY e-mail sent to you Twitter (or by an e-mail looking like it comes from Twitter), as often hackers forge e-mail to make it look like it is from Twitter to trick you into divulging your password to the hackers.
Instead it is always best, if you get such a mail from Twitter, to go directly to your Internet Browser and to type in the Twitter address directly to reset your password.
(INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY DAVID WILES)
* Zendesk also announced today that they have been hacked and three of their social clients, Pinterest, Twitter and Tumblr were affected. More on this.
