According to the New York Times, court records released Friday suggest that elements of the social media site’s source code — the underlying programming that makes Twitter possible — have been exposed online, in yet another humiliating development for new Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
According to court documents, Twitter filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in an attempt to have the offending code removed from the Github collaborative programming network, where it had been placed. Although the code was withdrawn the same day, no information was provided about how long it had been online, nor about the extent or depth of the breach. Twitter also asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to reveal both the identity of the user who posted the code and those who accessed and downloaded it as part of the takedown request, which was reminiscent of Raytheon’s famous – and ultimately unsuccessful – attempt at court-sanctioned doxxing.
According to sources inside the firm privy to the internal inquiry into the leak, Twitter management believes it was the work of a disgruntled employee who departed “within the previous year.” Elon Musk, coincidentally, acquired Twitter last October for an eye-watering $44 billion and proceeded to lay off or otherwise lose 80 percent of the company’s workers, not the 75 per cent that everyone anticipated Musk would conduct in the run-up to his acquisition.
The executive who talked with the NYT is most worried that the stolen code’s findings may enable future hacking attempts, either by disclosing new flaws or providing bad actors access to Twitter user data. If the site’s more volatile page functioning wasn’t enough to drive users fleeing, the site’s rebirth of fraudsters and white racists after Elon’s takeover should have done the trick.
