News

Twitter Admits Data Breach Compromised Anonymous Accounts

Twitter has released an official statement admitting that it was unable to confirm the number of profiles exposed, but expects the figure to top 5.4 million.

Published

4 years ago

August 9, 2022

Nour Nasir

twitter admits data breach compromised anonymous accounts

Twitter has released a statement acknowledging that in December 2020, a coding error resulted in a data breach of user information. A hacker exploited the flaw before it was discovered and subsequently patched in January 2022.

The vulnerability allowed malicious actors to submit an email address or phone number to verify if it was associated with an existing Twitter account. Hackers could then access the associated account ID, linking the information together.

A researcher uncovered the coding flaw through Twitter’s Bug Bounty program. The social media giant claimed that the vulnerability hadn’t been exploited before engineers were made aware of the issue. However, a hacker who contacted the website Bleeping Computer disputed the official narrative, claiming to have gained access to over 5.4 million user accounts via the flawed code and offering to sell the data for $30,000.

After reviewing the compiled database, Twitter responded with an official statement:

“Because we can’t verify every account that may have been affected, we’re releasing this alert because we’re particularly concerned about people using pseudonymous accounts who may be targeted by the state or other actors. If you use a pseudonymous Twitter account, we realize the hazards that an occurrence like this might bring and we profoundly regret that this happened.”

Also Read: Report Highlights $7.45 Million In Damages From Data Breaches Across The Middle East

Owners of accounts that have been compromised due to the data breach will be notified by direct message from Twitter, with the company advising those who wish to remain anonymous online not to associate a publicly available email or phone number with their account.

Because two or more individuals have already purchased and gained access to the leaked data, users should be wary of targeted phishing scams trying to gain access to login credentials. Although no passwords were revealed during the initial breach, Twitter advises all users to adopt two-factor authentication for an extra layer of security.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

Also Read: Dubai Says Its Deepfake Detector Needs Just 7 Seconds Of Video

“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.