Parts of Twitter’s source code leaked, says newspaper – 03/26/2023 – Market

Parts of Twitter’s source code, which is the programmatic base that supports the functioning of the social network, were leaked on the internet, according to documents of a process to which the American newspaper The New York Times had access.

According to the publication, this is a rare and important exposure of the company’s intellectual property, which has been facing technical challenges in recent months, at the same time that the business enters a new phase under the command of billionaire Elon Musk.

According to the newspaper, Twitter took measures on Friday (24) to remove the leaked source code from circulation, by sending a notice of copyright infringement to GitHub, a platform aimed at software developers where information have been published.

It would not have been clear how long the source code of the social network was exposed, but the publication indicates that the information was available for a few months.

One of the concerns is that the leaked source code indicates security vulnerabilities that could give hackers the ability to extract user data or bring down the social network platform.

Twitter would also have asked the California Court that GitHub be obliged to identify the person who shared the source code, as well as all those who downloaded the information.

The New York Times also said that Twitter opened an internal investigation that found the person responsible for the leak to be a former employee who left the company last year, according to two people familiar with the process.

The person who leaked the Twitter source code would go by the codename “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” (free expression enthusiast) on GitHub, according to the process to which the American publication had access. The user’s pseudonym appears to reference Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist”.

The newspaper indicates that, since Musk acquired the social network in October for US$ 44 billion (R$ 232.8 billion), about 75% of the company’s employees have been fired or asked to leave.

The disclosure about the leak came just days after Musk promised to make part of Twitter’s source code public. On the 17th, the billionaire made a post on the social network in which he said he would disclose on March 31 the source code that serves as the basis for making suggestions for posts to users, so that anyone could examine it to point out possible failures.

The leak of the code adds to the challenges that the social network has been facing recently.

Musk has been restructuring the company by cutting costs, rolling out new features and allowing banned users to return. Access failures to the social network, however, have increased, while advertisers, who are the main source of revenue for the business, remain reluctant to hire advertising spaces on the platform.

The current delicate moment of the social network has been reflected in a sharp drop in the market value of the operation.

On Friday, Musk would have sent an email to employees in which he said that Twitter is worth about US$ 20 billion (R$ 105 billion), less than half the amount disbursed by the billionaire when buying the company about five years ago. months.

According to the newspaper, the businessman would have stated in the email that “radical changes” are necessary, which would include mass layoffs and cost cutting, in order to avoid the bankruptcy of the social network.