SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 2, (Agencies): The social media giant Twitter acknowledged that it has become the latest victim in a number of cyber-attacks against media companies, saying hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users.

The company said a blog post on Friday it detected attempts to gain access to its user data earlier in the week. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.

But Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users they describe as ‘a very small percentage of our users.”
Nonetheless, the company reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising the affected users.

The online attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of US media and technology companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both American 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.

Aggressive
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 foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Saturday, but the Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyber-attacks.

“Chinese law forbids hacking and any other actions that damage Internet security,” the Chinese Defense Ministry recently said. “The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities.”

Although Bob Lord, Twitter’s director of information security 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.”

One expert said that the Twitter hack probably happened after an employee’s home or work computer was compromised through vulnerabilities in Java, a commonly used computing language whose weaknesses have been well publicized.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said such a move would give attackers “a toehold” in Twitter’s internal network, potentially allowing them either to sniff out user information as it traveled across the company’s system or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users’ passwords.

In a telephone interview Friday, Soltani said that the relatively small number of users affected suggested either that attackers weren’t on the network long or that they were only able to compromise a subset of the company’s servers.

Twitter is generally used to broadcast messages to the public, so the hacking might not immediately have yielded any important secrets. But the stolen credentials could be used to eavesdrop on private messages or track which Internet address a user is posting from.

That might be useful, for example, for an authoritarian regime trying to keep tabs on a journalist’s movements.

“More realistically, someone could use that as an entry point into another service,” Soltani said, noting that since few people bother using different passwords for different services, a password stolen from Twitter might be just as handy for reading a journalist’s emails.

Concerns
A series of brazen cyberattacks on America’s most high-profile media outlets has revived concerns over Chinese hackers, who analysts say are likely linked to the secretive Beijing government.

The attacks, part of a string of incidents traced back to Chinese servers associated with previous intrusions, underscore an urgent need for Washington to pressure Beijing to rein in its digital warriors, experts say.

Other security professionals argue it is hard to be certain the attacks stem from China or that the hackers acted at the behest of the government.

This week, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported that their computer networks had been compromised, alleging it was an effort by the Chinese government to spy on news media operating in the country.

James Lewis, cybersecurity specialist at US thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there is evidence that backs the allegations of Chinese government involvement.

Hackers from China have previously been linked to attacks on US defense giant Lockheed-Martin, Google and Coca-Cola. Other reports say Chinese hackers have tried to infiltrate the Pentagon’s computers and those of US lawmakers.

“The Chinese don’t play by the rules that the rest of the world plays by,” Lewis told AFP. “That’s partly because they don’t understand them and partly because they don’t value them.”
Lewis said the level of attacks is “reaching an intolerable level” and will force a US government response that goes beyond words.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that in his coming book, Google chairman Eric Schmidt brands China an Internet menace that sanctions cyber crime for economic and political gain.
“The New Digital Age” is authored by Schmidt in a collaboration with Jared Cohen, a former US State Department advisor who heads a Google Ideas think tank. The book is due for release in April.
The authors reportedly brand China “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information” and “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that there has been an increase in hacking attacks on both state institutions and private companies.

“We have to begin making it clear to not only the Chinese... that the United States is going to be having to take actions to protect not only our governments but our private sector from this kind of illegal intrusion,” she said.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at British security firm Sophos, said news media had not considered themselves likely targets of attacks until now.

He said that if the recent reports are accurate, the goal is likely “to track who the journalists may be meeting and take actions against those people.”

This typically involves “a long-term undercover effort” where hackers seek to prowl computer systems unnoticed.

Cluley said that even if the source of attacks is confirmed, “it’s very hard to neutralize” because hackers can simply move. “Do you want to knock an entire country off the Internet?”

China’s defense ministry reiterated comments this week that it “never supported any hacking attacks.”
Ryan Sherstobitoff, a researcher with the security firm McAfee, said that “it’s hard to pinpoint the origin” of the attacks because computer traffic can be routed through various locations.

But he said the overwhelming majority of computer infiltrations come from employees mistakenly opening booby-trapped email attachments faked to appear as if it came from a colleague.

This technique, known as “spear phishing,” ends up installing malware that can remain on a network and allow hackers to view or control data.

“There is certainly a rise in the numbered of these targeted attacks,” Sherstobitoff said.
The Times said hackers stole corporate passwords and targeted the computers of 53 employees, in response to the newspaper’s investigation into the vast wealth amassed by a top Chinese leader’s family.

The newspaper said Bloomberg News was also targeted by Chinese hackers. And the Beijing correspondent of Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper said he had been hacked in 2011 in an effort to find China-related files.

Jody Westby, a cybersecurity consultant and adjunct faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the attacks “shine a glaring spotlight on the inadequacies of US diplomacy in addressing cyber threats.”

Andrew Mertha, a Cornell University specialist on China, said the cyber spying highlights Beijing’s awkward efforts to extend its global influence.