Twitter Inc has alerted a European Union data protection watchdog about the cyberattack it fell victim to last week, days after the company said hackers had targeted just some 130 accounts and didn’t steal any passwords.

The Irish Data Protection Commission has received a notification about the incident, said Graham Doyle, a spokesman for the regulator, which is the lead authority in the EU for Twitter and other US tech companies, that all have their EU base in the country.

Twitter is grappling with the worst security breach in its 14-year history after last week’s hack that compromised the accounts by global political and business leaders, including Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US president Barack Obama and Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk.

Those who gained access to the accounts used them to attempt a bitcoin scam, sending tweets asking for people to give them money in exchange for a bigger payment in return.

 - Bloomberg