Twitter announced late Friday it had been breached and that data for 250,000 Twitter users were vulnerable.

The firm said in a blog post it detected unusual access patterns earlier this week and found that user information — usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords — for 250,000 users might have been accessed in what it described as a “sophisticated attack”.

“This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident,” Bob Lord, Twitter’s director of information security, said in a blog post. “The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organisations have also been recently similarly attacked.”

UNDER VIRTUAL ATTACK

Twitter detected unusual access patterns earlier this week
It found information of 250,000 users might have been accessed
Twitter’s blog post said hackers had broken in through a vulnerability in Java software
The firm reset passwords and notified every compromised user
The company has been encouraging users to practice good password hygiene
Twitter says it ‘hashed’ passwords and ‘salted’ those
Once cracked, passwords can be valuable on auction — on black market sites, where a single password can fetch $20

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