Nearly 300 million email addresses leaked in recent Twitter data hack

SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter was recently impacted by data breach in which email addresses linked to nearly 300 million accounts were leaked. 

The Washington Post reported that on Dec. 23, the reported hacker who claimed credit for the online attack was advertising the account data for sale online, claiming to have 400 million records available for purchase. 

Alan Gal, co-founder of Israeli security firm Hudson Rock, claims to have first uncovered the leak by alerting the public on his Linkedin account. 

"The database contains 235,000,000 unique records of Twitter users and their email addresses and will, unfortunately, lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing, and doxxing," Gal said on LinkedIn.  "This is one of the most significant leaks I’ve seen," he added. 

The Washington Post reports that Gal found the data for sale on a well-known online hacking forum. 

The data breach comes as European and U.S., regulators are continuing to look into data protection when it comes to Twitter. 

On Dec. 23 the Irish Data Protection Commission announced that it was investigating the latest data leak saying it "will examine Twitter's compliance with data-protection law in relation to that security issue."

U.S. regulators say they have been looking at the company closely ever since Musk took over. 

"We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern," the FTC said in response to the firing and departure of security staff at the company.