The US Justice Department is working with Elon Musk’s X/Twitter to identify those behind an attempted password-recovery attack that targeted hundreds of thousands of users this week, US Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Wednesday.
Blanche said in a statement on X that “sophisticated cyber criminals” attempted the attack, but the platform was able to disrupt it.
He did not provide further details about the incident.
A password-recovery attack generally involves attempts to gain access to online accounts by exploiting the “forgot password” or account-recovery process.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The incident comes days after the US Justice Department announced an operation targeting QTFY, a Chinese cyberespionage platform.
The department said the US Senate, Federal Reserve, NASA, and other organizations were among those targeted by the platform.
This week, sophisticated cyber criminals attempted a password-recovery attack on hundreds of thousands of X users. X disrupted the attack to prevent user accounts from being captured. But, as we’ve shown, the Justice Department will stop at nothing in its pursuit of cyber…
— Attorney General Todd Blanche (@AGToddBlanche) September 2, 2026
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This is a developing story.
