According to a legal filing with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, portions of Twitter’s source code have been leaked online. The contents of the source code, which is the crucial software that powers the platform, were discovered on GitHub, a hosting service for software development. Twitter sent a copyright infringement notice to GitHub after discovering that its source code was on the site, demanding its immediate removal.
However, it is believed that the code may have been exposed on the site for “at least several months,” according to the New York Times. Twitter is now attempting to get the court to order GitHub to reveal the identity of the person who leaked the source code, as well as the names of anyone who may have downloaded it.
The concern is that the code’s publication could expose vulnerabilities in the platform, making it easier for hackers to exploit those weaknesses for nefarious purposes, potentially resulting in the site being knocked offline or user data being stolen and sold.
Twitter executives believe that the person who leaked the code left the company last year during a series of layoffs made by the new owner, Elon Musk, who acquired the platform in October 2022 in a deal worth $44 billion. The incident suggests that a disgruntled former employee may have been involved in the potentially damaging breach.
Despite companies’ best efforts to protect source code, it is a prime target for hackers, and perpetrators have managed to steal source code from Microsoft, Samsung, and LastPass in just the past year. In Twitter’s case, portions of its source code were simply uploaded to the web, making it easy for anyone to access.
Twitter and its 230 million daily active users worldwide will be monitoring the situation to see if the incident results in any significant problems for the social media platform.
