Twitter source code leaked to the public

According to the New York Times, part of the Twitter source code, including some of the social network’s internal tools, suddenly “surfaced” on GitHub. The company turned to the management of the site with a demand to find the perpetrator of the leak – but this has not yet been done.

The source notes that these sources were in the public domain for “several months”. The identity of the user who posted the code has not yet been established – but his FreeSpeechEnthusiast nickname is a reference to the former account name of Elon Musk himself.

In addition to the request to remove the code, Twitter filed a lawsuit to find the person responsible for the leak and obtain data on other users of the resource who may have already downloaded the company’s intellectual property. Representatives of GitHub did not answer the question of journalists about whether the resource will comply with Twitter’s request for the provision of identifying information.

The leadership of the social network believes that one of the former employees of the company, who were laid off last year, may be the culprit of what happened. Proprietary source code is usually categorized as one of the most important trade secrets – leaking it can lead to software vulnerabilities and give competitors an advantage because it contains the company’s internal non-public work.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, who paid $44 billion for Twitter, recently said that the social network is now worth only $20 billion. In this regard, the company pays special attention to cost reduction and active monetization – including through the paid subscription of Twitter Blue.