Elon Musk’s X might have a mole problem: “How could someone enumerate all Twitter user IDs, unless they were an employee?”

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Last week, xAI purchased X for $33 billion. Elon Musk appeared excited about this move, suggesting that the futures of xAI and X are closely connected. This acquisition could provide significant potential for Grok, as xAI can utilize X’s extensive database to train Grok. As a result, xAI’s new image generator tool, ChatGPT-40, might challenge OpenAI in the market.

Although there are plans for X in the future, it has unfortunately experienced a significant data breach. This incident involved approximately 2.8 billion Twitter user IDs, which could affect more than 200 million individuals, as reported by Safety Detectives.

Based on what ThinkingOne has disclosed, it appears that a potential data breach may have occurred around the time of X’s large-scale downsizing. Remarkably, these unscrupulous actors assert they tried to contact X through various channels, but their attempts were unsuccessful.

It may be why the details appeared secretive, causing attackers’ irritation, leading them to leak the information openly. The leaked data included details from the latest corporate downsizing and a data leak that occurred in January 2023.

In the year 2023, a significant data breach affected more than 209 million X users, revealing their email addresses, usernames, follower counts, and account creation dates. Yet, the severity of this data breach was minimized by X, who stated that the leak primarily consisted of information that was already publicly accessible.

While the company maintains that no sensitive data was compromised, cybersecurity professionals have cautioned that the data leak might create a significant danger. This is because an assortment of emails and publicly available information could easily encourage phishing attacks from malicious actors.

It turns out that the latest data breach we’ve experienced was significantly more severe than initially thought. Although the wrongdoers didn’t manage to get a hold of my email addresses, they did obtain sensitive information such as my location and time zone settings, count and timestamps of my last tweet, source of the last tweet, various status settings, and other details.

Was X’s massive data breach an inside job?

In an email conversation with Forbes, ThinkingOne clarified that they don’t consider themselves a hacker, rather they are a person passionate about data who aims to carry out all activities in a lawful manner.

The significant finding (in my opinion) is that approximately 2.8 billion records were stolen from Twitter/X. This breach surpasses all others on social media platforms in terms of affected users, making it the largest to date. There’s a chance that the individual responsible for the incident might possess additional data such as emails, phone numbers, and passwords.

As a researcher, I’d like to highlight that the publicly available data is actually a consolidated set from the 2023 and 2025 leaks, compressed into a single 34 GB CSV file for convenience. This dataset encompasses more than 201 million individual records, but it’s essential to remember that this data pertains only to users who were affected by both the incidents in question.

ThinkingOne confirmed to Forbes:

“In January 2025, a data breach exposed approximately 2.8 billion distinct Twitter user IDs and screennames. Upon examining a random selection of 100 entries, I found that 92 of them correctly matched the user ID and screenname.”

The person passionate about data showed worry regarding the huge data leak affecting countless users. “Is it possible for someone to list all Twitter user IDs, except if they were an employee or if this was a highly sophisticated cyber attack?” mused ThoughtfulOne.

We’ll closely follow the progression of this story and notify you promptly if there are any updates or fresh information that emerges.

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2025-04-02 15:39