Twitter Source Code Partially Leaked on GitHub

The company moved quickly to send a copyright infringement notice to GitHub, an online collaboration platform for software developers, to have the leaked code taken down. It is unclear how long the code had been online, but it appeared to have been public for several months.

Twitter has asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to order GitHub to identify the person responsible for sharing the code and any other individuals who downloaded it. 

"Twitter began an investigation into the leak and executives handling the matter have surmised that whoever was responsible left the San Francisco-based company last year, two people briefed on the internal investigation said."

Security Concerns

One of the main concerns of Twitter is that the leaked code includes security vulnerabilities that could give hackers or other motivated parties the means to extract user data or take down the site. The company is worried that the leak may result in a data breach or a cyberattack, which could seriously damage the reputation of the company.

The source code leak comes when Twitter is already facing mounting financial and structural challenges. 

Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion, has been trying to turn around the social network over the past few months by cutting costs, introducing new features, and welcoming back previously banned users. 

However, the outages of the service have increased, while advertisers, the main source of revenue for the company, have been hesitant to run ads on the site.

Musk has previously claimed that Twitter will open source the code used to recommend tweets on March 31. He said he expects people will find “silly” issues, and that providing code transparency will be “incredibly embarrassing” at first.

Our “algorithm” is overly complex & 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…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023

The leak of Twitter’s source code is a significant setback for the social media company. Twitter needs to address the issue of the leak and the security vulnerabilities that may have been exposed. 

The company needs to ensure that its user data is protected, and its platform is secure. Twitter also needs to find ways to address its financial and structural challenges and regain the trust of its users and advertisers.