In another embarrassing development for new Twitter boss Elon Musk, court documents released Friday reveal that parts of the social networking site’s source code, the core programming that makes Twitter possible, have leaked online. The New York Times reports.
According to the court filings, Twitter claimed copyright infringement in an effort to remove the infringing code from the Github collaborative programming network, where it had been posted. While the code was removed the same day, no details were released about how long the code was left in, nor the extent or depth of the leak. As part of the takedown request reminiscent of Raytheon’s famously failed court-sanctioned doxing attempt, Twitter has also asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to reveal the user’s identity. who posted the code and those who accessed and downloaded it.
He NOW reports that, according to sources within the company familiar with the internal investigation into the leak, Twitter executives strongly suspect it is the work of a disgruntled employee who left “within the last year.” Coincidentally, Elon Musk bought Twitter last October for the eye-popping price of $44 billion and proceeded to lay off and lose 80 percent of the company’s staff, not the 75 percent everyone feared Musk would enact in the run-up to your purchase.
The executive who spoke with the NOW they are primarily concerned that the revelations gained from the stolen code could empower future hacking efforts, either by revealing new vulnerabilities or allowing bad guys access to Twitter user data. If the page’s increasingly temperamental functionality wasn’t enough to send the site’s user base over the hills than the site’s resurgence of con artists and white nationalists since Elon took power, will it be the ultimate threat to advertisers and users alike?
All Engadget Recommended products are curated by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publication.