Twitter says spear-phishing attack on employees led to breach

San Francisco: Twitter, whose internal systems were breached about two weeks ago, said on Thursday the incident targeted a small number of employees through a phone “spear-phishing” attack.

The US microblogging site said the hackers targeted about 130 accounts, tweeted from 45, accessed the inboxes of 36, and were able to download Twitter data from seven.

Attackers also targeted specific employees who had access to account support tools, Twitter said, adding that it restricted access to its internal tools and systems ever since the incident occurred.

Hackers had accessed Twitter’s internal systems on July 15 to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former US President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency.