In the latest plotpoint of chaos happening at Twitter HQ, the social media platform has suffered a substantial leak. It has been widely reported that parts of Twitter’s source code have been leaked online, leading to a more vulnerable position for the company against hackers and competitors.
The leak, found to be on GitHub, was immediately dealt with by Twitter with a copyright takedown notice and threats of legal action against the culprit, who is believed to be a disgruntled former employee.
As per NYT: “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.”
“GitHub does not generally comment on decisions to remove content. However, in the interest of transparency, we share every DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] takedown request publicly,” a GitHub spokesperson told the BBC.
Given that the number of potentially disgruntled former employees is in the thousands, they should have more evidence before they go accusing a needle in a haystack – and it appears they have it.
The BBC went on to report: “In the takedown request, Twitter called on GitHub to provide information on who was behind the account which leaked the code-named FreeSpeechEnthusiast.”
Make of that what you will.
