Twitter has called its lawyers in after a hacker broke into their system, stole hundreds of documents and sent them for publishing on a range of blogs. They confirmed that “About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked.” Using her personal account the hacker then managed to access Twitter’s Google Documents which are used to share information on notes, financial data and more. Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone was quick to add that “the attack has nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps.”
The hacker, believed to originate from France under the moniker “Hacker Croll”, accessed the files by guessing passwords and usernames, before forwarding the data onto internet blog sites. TechCrunch, which received a large amount of information, then posted some of the material to its site.
A respected Silicon Valley blog, TechCrunch began by publishing previously public details of a reality TV series with which Twitter were involved in. It then continued to gradually post further private data from the company.
“There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published” TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington said “But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.”
Mr Arrington spoke further of the information, saying that he was taking legal counsel over the laws which cover trade secrets and publication of confidential information. Meanwhile Twitter’s Biz Stone said “We are in touch with out legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker and anyone who accepts….or publishes these stolen documents.”
