Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/twitter-source-code-leak.html

by tysone • 3 years ago

104 27 3 years ago

nytimes.com

barlo• 3 years ago

This certainly could be uncomfortable for Musk.

wmf3• 3 years ago

He'll just use it as more evidence that the people he laid off deserved to be laid off.

nubinetwork2• 3 years ago

Laid off would imply that they could be rehired at some point... let's just call it what it is... mass firings.

erickhill• 3 years ago

Is an anonymous user on Github protected from Twitter learning their actual identity?

danso• 3 years ago

I would think their identity is as subject to subpoena as any anon user at any social media service.

From the article:

Twitter also asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order GitHub to identify the person who shared the code and any other individuals who downloaded it, according to the filing.

I wonder if GitHub could be compelled to turn over ever IP that did a git clone?

nubinetwork2• 3 years ago

I wonder if twitter can be compelled to show how they manipulated the website to promote elon tweets /s

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets...

ed25519FUUU• 3 years ago

Not in legal discovery.

stusmall• 3 years ago

I've got to admit I get a kick out of the fact that the GitHub username was "FreeSpeechEnthusiast" https://github.com/github/dmca/blame/master/2023/03/2023-03-...

textadventure• 3 years ago

"It was unclear how long the leaked code had been online, but it appeared to have been public for at least several months."

Interesting. I wonder what the repo was called, I imagine it couldn't have been anything extremely obvious or we would have heard about this earlier.

seanieb• 3 years ago

Yahoo!'s cache still has a cache of the page: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3a%2f%2fgithub.com%2...

It wasn't obliviously named at all. The toplevel folders were:

- adp

- ann

- auth

- aws-dal-reg-svc

The README.md file just said "PublicSpace"

And the breakdown of languages used is odd for twitter: - Scala 56.2%

- Java 27.3%

- Python 7.9%

- Starlark 4.7%

- Shell 2.4%

- Thrift 1.2%

- Other 0.3%

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

Appears their user account was created on Jan 3, 2023, so unless it was somewhere else too, it's not exactly "several" months

mdaniel• 3 years ago

Either the cache entry has expired or (if "bingj.com" is associated with the Bing) I can easily imagine someone in Microsoft "helped" it along

I'll save you the trouble: Wayback only has the DMCA notice since the snapshot was taken today

lapcat2• 3 years ago

One concern is that the code includes security vulnerabilities

I find this kind of funny, because open source is typically viewed as a benefit as far as security is concerned.

Given how few engineers remain at Twitter, they probably ought to open source their code and allow outsiders to find and fix security vulnerabilities, freeing up Twitter engineers to figure out how in the world to generate revenue for the service.

jonny_eh2• 3 years ago

For client code sure. Not server code that protects user data that could be exploited with a 0-day exploit.

lapcat2• 3 years ago

Linux is open source. PHP is open source. Mastodon is open source.

Ruby on Rails, WordPress, ssh. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of things too.

wmf3• 3 years ago

Code that's intentionally open source tends to have better security long-term. Proprietary code that was accidentally leaked is pretty bad for security in the short term.

sverhagen• 3 years ago

and allow outsiders to find and fix security vulnerabilities, freeing up Twitter engineers to figure out how

...to boost Musk's tweets.

solarkraft• 3 years ago

Isn't the code terrible anyway? Doesn't Musk want to open source stuff anyway?

Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online

Related Stories