Bankruptcy is no longer threat: Twitter to close data center in Sacramento, data of 400 million social network users leaked online

Twitter is no longer threatened by imminent bankruptcy, but there is still much to do to save the business, said the new head and owner of the company Elon Musk, whose company plans to close one of its main data center. At the same time, one of the hackers published the data of 400 million Twitter users.

Earlier, Musk stated that Twitter is heading full steam ahead toward bankruptcy and that daily losses could reach $4 million. However, later on Saturday, appearing on a podcast of one of his PayPal colleagues, David Sacks, he said that he had already managed to make the company's expenses manageable, and now the company is not moving full steam ahead toward bankruptcy. According to Musk, things are “generally going in the right direction”.

Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022, after which the company still owes $13 billion. From day one, Musk began actively cutting staff and expenses. He turned the vacated office space of Twitter's headquarters into a "hotel" where other employees could sleep and rest.

In early December, Musk sold Tesla shares he owned for about $3.6 billion, calling it a "safety belt" for Twitter. However, after the company's stock price plummeted, he promised not to sell his stock again until 2024.

One of Twitter's three main data centers is closing

The company plans to close its Sacramento data center, one of Twitter's three main data centers, as part of further cost-cutting efforts. The company also plans to downsize its Atlanta office.

According to media reports, the Sacramento data center will close in 2023. In January, the center in Portland, Oregon, will take over its functions. There are also plans to shut down some of the equipment at the third main center in Atlanta, Georgia.

It is unclear yet whether the remaining servers will be able to handle the load. Experts fear that such initiatives will lead to service interruptions and the situation with the reliability and availability of the company's services will deteriorate.

Twitter not only uses its own data centers, but also cloud resources of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, but the terms of cooperation with them are also planned to be reviewed, again in order to save money.

Hacker released a database with information about 400 million users

Recently an unknown hacker published data of 400 million Twitter users on one of the forums. To prove the authenticity of data he provided a small part of it, including information about 1000 users, including Ethereum cryptocurrency creator Vitalik Buterin, Apple founder Steve Wozniak, billionaire Mark Cuban, cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs and many other famous personalities. Independent information security experts confirmed the authenticity of the leaked data.

In his post, the hacker blackmails Elon Musk and offers him to buy the data immediately and avoid lawsuits and fines until someone else buys it. The seller also did not specify the price of the database - he is still waiting for offers from interested parties.

Musk and Twitter have not yet officially responded to the hacker's threats.

Twitter could face multi-million dollar fines from the U.S. and EU regulatory agencies if it published the leaked information. In particular Twitter could be fined up to 4% of its annual turnover in the European Union.

Criminals recently published information on a hacker forum about hacking more than 5.4 million Twitter accounts in 2021.