Twitter’s source code leaked; concerns over vulnerabilities and insider risk

Twitter is in hot water after its source code was reportedly leaked, with the company suspecting a former employee of being behind the breach. According to reports, parts of the code were available on GitHub, an online software development platform, for several months before Twitter filed a copyright infringement notice and had it taken down. The social media giant has now requested that GitHub reveal the identity of the user responsible for the leak, who went by the username “FreeSpeechEnthusiast”.

The leak of Twitter’s source code is a significant concern for the company, as it could expose vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit to target users. While some companies only publish parts of their source code to improve app security, Twitter executives were reportedly unaware of the leak until recently. The news comes as Musk plans to open source the code used to recommend tweets at the end of this month, admitting in a tweet that the current algorithm is overly complex and not fully understood internally. Musk hopes that providing transparency through open-sourcing the code will lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality.

It is currently unclear whether any hackers have already exploited vulnerabilities discovered through the leaked source code. However, cybersecurity experts have voiced concern about the public posting of Twitter’s code, with one expert suggesting that keeping employees happy is one of the best ways to mitigate insider risk.

Twitter has been going through significant changes since Musk’s takeover last year, with more than 50% of the global workforce being laid off or voluntarily leaving the company. Out of the 7,500 employees in its ranks in September 2022 only 3000 remain today. Musk has stated that the company is being reshaped rapidly, with the latest move being to increase the Twitter Blue subscriber base by removing legacy verified badges at the end of this month. This will force old Twitter users with the blue tick on their profile to get a monthly subscription to protect the coveted badge, which is currently held by around 419,000 profiles.