Parts of Twitter’s source code were posted to code-sharing site Github, and have seemingly been available there for several months before the company noticed …
It has now been taken down, and Twitter has asked a court to order Github to reveal who uploaded it, as well as details of anyone who downloaded a copy.
Twitter’s source code leak revealed by legal filing
The New York Times learned of the leak through that legal filing.
Parts of Twitter’s source code […] were leaked online, according to a legal filing, a rare and major exposure of intellectual property as the company struggles to reduce technical issues and reverse its business fortunes under Elon Musk.
Twitter moved on Friday to have the leaked code taken down by sending a copyright infringement notice to GitHub, an online collaboration platform for software developers where the code was posted, according to the filing. GitHub complied and took down the code that day. It was unclear how long the leaked code had been online, but it appeared to have been public for at least several months.
Twitter also asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order GitHub to identify the person who shared the code and any other individuals who downloaded it, according to the filing.
Twitter issued a copyright takedown notice to Github, and the code collaboration site shared that notice.
Please provide a detailed description of the original copyrighted work that has allegedly been infringed. If possible, include a URL to where it is posted online.
Proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.
What files should be taken down? Please provide URLs for each file, or if the entire repository, the repository’s URL.
https://github.com/FreeSpeechEnthusiast/PublicSpace
Please preserve and provide copies of any related upload / download / access history (and any contact info, IP addresses, or other session info related to same), and any associated logs related to this repo or any forks thereof, before removing all the infringing content from Github.
The leak raises security concerns, as examining the source code could help hackers identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited to access user data – or even take down the platform. Competing social networks would also be interested in the code, as it could reveal valuable insider details about the way the service operates.
9to5Mac’s Take
It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that the code was most likely uploaded by one of the many engineers laid off by Musk in the wake of his purchase of the company.
Musk slashed the workforce in order to save money, and in an email to employees on Friday admitted that the company is currently worth less than half the sum he paid for it following the loss of a huge amount of ad revenue.
Major advertisers, including Apple, either fled the platform altogether, or substantially cut their spend, in response to the Twitter Blue fiasco, and concerns about reduced moderation potentially positioning their brands alongside hate speech. Musk later claimed that Apple had resumed its normal spend.
Photo: Chris Ried/Unsplash
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments