On their official blog Twitter announced today that about a month ago an employee's personal email account was hacked, which then enabled said hackers to break into the Google apps account of the employee and retrieve some rather sensitive documents. The
blog goes on to reassure readers that the Google Apps breach was not caused by any particular security vulnerability within Google Apps.
"It's important to note that the stolen documents which were downloaded
and offered to various blogs and publications are not Twitter user
accounts nor were any user accounts compromised" said the official notification. "This was not a hack on the Twitter service, it was a personal attack followed by the theft of private company documents."
Twitter go on to say that this simply highlights the vulnerability of potentially high profile staff as being targets of malicious practices, something we should all be aware of as we use social media and attempt to create high visibility personas.
Twitter are consulting legal counsel to understand actions that might be taken against any person identified as sharing these documents. Twitter do not allude as to the content of these files other than to say that they were "never meant for public communication, publishing these documents
publicly could jeopardize relationships with Twitter's ongoing and
potential partners."
