Twitter says hackers likely had access to direct messages of 36 users in last week’s attack

Twitter said that hackers who broke into its system last week were likely able to read the direct messages of 36 accounts, including those of one elected official in the Netherlands.

“We believe that for up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, the attackers accessed the DM inbox, including 1 elected official in the Netherlands. To date, we have no indication that any other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed,” the social media giant said in an updated press release Wednesday night. 

“We are actively working on communicating directly with the account-holders that were impacted.” 

Twitter had previously said that hackers last week had gained access to 130 accounts in total, including 45 verified accounts. Some of those, including CEOs Elon Musk and Bill Gates, former Vice President Joe Biden and more, had tweets sent by attackers.

Twitter did not clarify if any of the 36 accounts where messages could have been read were verified accounts.

The tech company previously said hackers downloaded mass data from eight accounts, though none were verified accounts.

Twitter said last week that hackers were successful in manipulating several of the social media company’s employees into handing over credentials for internal systems and that it will work to “[secure] our systems to prevent future attacks” and implement “company-wide training to guard against social engineering tactics to supplement the training employees receive during onboarding and ongoing phishing exercises throughout the year.”

The FBI is currently investigating to try to identify the hackers.