Streaming platform Twitch hacked: major data leak exposes source code, creator payouts
The leak, which initially surfaced on the 4chan message board, linked to a torrent weighing in at a massive 125 gigabytes in data.
Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch suffered a massive breach of data on Wednesday, leaking the source code for the company’s streaming service alongside two years worth of details of creator payouts.
The leak, which initially surfaced on the 4chan message board, linked to a torrent weighing in at a massive 125 gigabytes in data. The poster, who is anonymous, claims that the leak includes the entirety of Twitch and its code history. The poster claims that the leak is intended to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space.”
Rebel News can confirm the legitimacy of the leak, which includes creator payout data as recent as September 2021, and dates back to mid-2019. The leak also contains code for Twitch web, mobile, desktop, and video game console clients as recent as last week.
Twitch confirmed that it suffered a data breach on early Wednesday, hours after details of the leak surfaced on social media, with many pointing out the earnings of the platform’s most popular streamers.
As corroborated by the Verge, the leak includes three years worth of details of creator payouts on Twitch; the entirety of the Twitch.tv website “with comet history going back to its early beginnings”; source code for Twitch clients on mobile, desktop and video game console platforms; an unreleased competitor to Valve’s Steam, an online video game digital distribution service; code related to a new proprietary Amazon services; data on other Twitch properties, including Curseforge and IGDB; and finally Twitch’s internal security tools.
The 4chan leaker claims that the Twitch leak is simply a portion of more data to come.
The Verge reported:
The leak has been labeled as “part one,” suggesting that there could be more to come. While personal information like creator payments is included, this initial leak doesn’t appear to include passwords, addresses, or email accounts of Twitch users. Instead, the leaker appears to have focused on sharing Twitch’s own company tools and information, rather than code that would include personal accounts.
… The Twitch leak will be damaging for the game streaming service either way and particularly for creators who rely on Twitch to keep their earnings and information secure. The hack follows weeks of protest for Twitch to improve its service under the #DoBetterTwitch movement. Twitch streamers also took a day off in August to protest against the company’s lack of action against hate raids.
Despite containing payout data for Twitch creators, the leak does not include any password or address information on the platform’s users and creators. However, this does not mean that private data was not also obtained in the apparent breach.
Users have been asked to change their passwords by the platform and to take security precautions in light of the leak.
Unlike the recent leak of Facebook user profile data, which included the details of some 1.5 billion users, the Twitch breach appears to be ideologically motivated as the leaker responsible put the stolen data up for free and did not attempt to sell it.
We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021
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