Twitter suspended the account of Guccifer 2 on Saturday, after the notorious hacker revealed a cache of information stolen in a cyber-assault on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Wikileaks—which itself sparked a firestorm a few weeks ago by publishing a massive trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee, which resulted in the resignations of the organization's top brass—was among the first to notice Guccifer's account had been suspended:
Rather than revealing communications between officials, however, Guccifer's breach shared more sensitive data such as passwords, contact lists, and cellphone numbers. Twitter's rules explicitly prohibit the disclosure of such information.
The attack bore similar hallmarks to the one that exposed the DNC's communications, which showed staffers favoring the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton over that of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. The controversy ended up costing the DNC's chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, her job.
Twitter's move may court new controversy over the enforcement of its user policies. The social network has been criticized relentlessly for selectively censoring certain accounts, for reasons some users have speculated are political in nature.
A Twitter spokesperson told CNBC the company does not comment on individual accounts, but referred to its policy on posting private information.
Last month, Twitter permanently suspended the account of conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos—a vocal supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump—after a mob of his Twitter supporters got into an online confrontation with actress and comedian Leslie Jones.