The recent hacking of Twitter, which potentially compromised some 250.000 accounts, may have been at the hands of Chinese hackers, who may still have access to the quarter million accounts now.

Many fear that the hackers have user names, email addresses and passwords belonging to the accounts.

This is the latest in a string of cyber attacks, as major publications including the New York Times have also recently fallen victim.

Not only is it suspected that the hackers are Chinese, but that they are within the Government of China, and that these attacks have been sponsored by the government.

The waging of cyber warfare has been feared by science fiction writers well before the internet was widespread, but the reality of the situation may very well be imminent.

While spokesmen from Beijing deny endorsing any hacking, fears of government-sponsored attacks from China have grown substantially, as the country allegedly hopes to learn trade secrets from American companies, as well as national defense and infrastructure systems.

According to Twitter’s director of information security, Bob Lord, said that the massive attack on the social media network “was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident.”

“The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked,” said Mr. Lord.

“For that reason we felt that it was important to publicise this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.”

Twitter and Facebook are both banned in China, but they have their own version of Twitter, called Weibo, which is government-run.

James Gilbert | Elite.