The hacker would have taken advantage of a vulnerability to copy the data of millions of users. He invites Elon Musk to pay to avoid any problem with Europe.
This is news that could hurt Elon Musk and his few remaining teams even more. A hacker claims to have been able to collect the data of 400 million users on Twitter. Data that includes email addresses and phone numbers.
In his message published on Breach Forums, a sort of marketplace often used to sell data obtained illegally, the hacker indicated that the data of celebrities, political figures, companies and individuals were in his possession.
Elon Musk forced to pay
The hacker, however, says he will not reveal the data to anyone. Its objective is quite different: to make Elon Musk pay.
“The data won’t be sold to anyone else, so a lot of personalities will not be victims of phishing, scams or doxxing as well as other things that could make users lose trust in your company”, insists the pirate.
The hacker thus plays on the risk that Elon Musk incurs with the European Commission if this loss of data of 400 million users were to continue. “You already risk a fine concerning the RGPD because of a leak of the data of 5.4 million Internet users. Imagine the fine for 400 million users”, recalls the hacker.
He then claims that the best option for Elon Musk to avoid paying a fine of $276 million (which would appear to be a calculated conversion based on the fine received by Facebook and its 533 million users with stolen data) is to pay to recover this data.
To support his request and show that it is not a scam, the hacker even revealed several names of celebrities affected by the flaw, as shown in a screenshot recovered by the Hudson Rock account.
We thus find the email addresses and other data of Donald Trump, SpaceX, the World Health Organization or the American representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, it is impossible to say whether the pirate has the data of the 400 million users as mentioned.
For the moment, Elon Musk has not reacted to this ultimatum.
