Twitter’s source code, the core of any application, has reportedly been leaked, and the company suspects a former employee behind this. Parts of code was available on GitHub, an online software development platform, “for at least several months,” but was taken down after the social media company filed a “copyright infringement notice.
As reported by The New York Times, Twitter has also asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to order GitHub to reveal the identity of the user, apparently named “FreeSpeechEnthusiast.” The username has a slight reference to Twitter’s current owner Elon Musk who refers to himself as a “free speech absolutist. The report also states that Twitter executives were only recently made aware of the source code leak. Source codes are often considered sacred by developers and can reveal vulnerabilities that can assist hackers in targeting users. Sometimes, companies only publish parts of the source code to improve app security. Musk is also planning to open source code used to recommend tweets at the end of this month.
In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said, ‘our algorithm’ is overly complex and not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things, but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found! We’re developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it’s still a work in progress. That’ll also be open source. Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality. Most importantly, we hope to earn your trust.”
It remains unclear whether hackers have already exploited vulnerabilities discovered via the source code. However, the latest leak will be a blow to the company, which is finding different ways to boost revenue.
Since Musk’s takeover last year, more than 50 percent of the Twitter global workforce has been laid off, while some voluntarily left the company. Currently, the company employs roughly 3000 workers, down from 7,500 in September 2022.
A cybersecurity expert, Brett Callow, told the publication that “public posting of Twitter’s code is concerning.” He adds that “one of the best ways to mitigate insider risk is to keep your employees happy and that certainly hasn’t been the case at Twitter.”
Musk maintains that Twitter “is being reshaped rapidly.” The company’s latest move to increase its Twitter Blue subscriber base is by removing legacy verified badges at the end of this month. This would force old Twitter users with the blue tick on their profile to get a monthly subscription to protect the coveted badge. There are roughly 4.19 lakh verified profiles on Twitter.
