Twitter: Hackers may have had access to 'limited information' for 250,000 users

Twitter acknowledged on Friday that hackers may have had access to user information for a quarter of a million people.

"We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users," the company said in a blog post.

Passwords and tokens for those users have been changed, Twitter said, and if you were affected, you were or will be contacted regarding the change.

"This 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," the post went on.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that it was continually hacked for four months from China, after the paper reported on the billions of dollars that the family of China's prime minister had made. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journalclaimed it was also hacked from China.

[h/t All Things D]

[Image via AFP]