In a court filing made on Friday, Twitter revealed that a portion of its source code was leaked online earlier – putting the platform’s security at risk.
Though Twitter used DMCA to take down the posted code in GitHub, it’s now requesting the court to order GitHub for sharing the details on who posted it, accessed it, or downloaded it. Some staff at Twitter hint that it could be the work of any former disgruntled employee, who was laid off recently.
Risking the Platform Security
As if the current state of affairs weren’t stressful, Twitter had to deal with the new headache of its platform’s source code being leaked online! The company revealed this in a court filing on Friday, where Twitter stated that a portion of its source code was posted to Github earlier!
While it’s unknown who had done it, nor how did it happen, Twitter used the power of copyright infringement to takedown that listing from GitHub. While it’s safe for now, it didn’t know how many people had seen it already, or downloaded it!
Anyone accessing the source code – the base programming code on which Twitter runs on – can exploit the platform better since they know all the flaws better. Thus, any hacker getting his hands on this could be disastrous.
Well, Twitter is trying to find out – as per The New York Times – in a way that Raytheon tried. Twitter requested the District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to reveal the identity of accounts that posted the code and those who accessed and downloaded it.
Attempts for such court-sanctioned doxxing had failed earlier, so we wait if anything unusual to happens in Twitter’s case. Until then, Twitter continues to fear potential attacks on its platform – since it’s more vulnerable now. Some executives at Twitter strongly suspect that it could be the work of a disgruntled employee who had left, “within the last year.”
