Twitter says that some of its source code was leaked and appeared on Microsoft's GitHub open source repository platform. According to the company in a court filing on Friday (via The New York Times), Twitter found the code on Friday and requested GitHub to remove the source code.
GitHub complied with that request and took down the code on the same day. However, it is not known when the code was added to GitHub and how long it had been there. Twitter suggests it may have been available in public on GitHub for “at least several months.”
While GitHub complied with Twitter's request, the software company is not handing over information on who uploaded the source code and who downloaded it. That is why Twitter is filing court proceedings against GitHub, seeking to force the company into handing over the information.
The NYT report cites an anonymous source who says Twitter executives think the leak comes from a former employee. Twitter laid off thousands of employees when Elon Musk became CEO and owner following his $49bn acquisition last year.
Hacks
Of course, having source code publicly available could pose risks of hackers using the code to breach Twitter's security. In January, a database containing information from 235 million Twitter users became become available online via a hacker forum. The dataset includes 63GB of data including email addresses, names, follower counts, Twitter hands, and account creation information.
Last December, information from 400 million Twitter users leaked online due to a programming interface bug. The vulnerability in Twitter seemingly allowed a hacker to scrape account data from 400 million accounts on the micro-blogging site.
Tip of the day: It's a good idea to backup your computer on a regular basis, and the most fool-proof way is to manually create a disk image and save it to an external hard drive.
