Report: 2015 Twitter breach targeted Saudi dissidents, led to arrests

Enlarge / Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (credit: Alexander Zemlianichenko / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The sister of a Saudi dissident has told Bloomberg that a 2015 breach by two Twitter employees enabled the Saudi government to unmask several anonymous Twitter accounts whose tweets criticized the regime. The US federal government criminally charged the two rogue employees last November.

Abdulrahman al-Sadhan is a US-educated Saudi man who worked for the Red Crescent Movement-the Muslim world's counterpart to the Red Cross. He also secretly ran a popular pseudonymous Twitter account with thousands of followers. The account criticized the Saudi government.

It is clear this was a targeted attack on purpose on activists and critics on Twitter," said Areej al-Sadhan, Abdulrahman's sister. My brother, unfortunately, is one of those who was targeted.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments