On March 28, 2023, a significant amount of Twitter’s source code was leaked on GitHub shortly after the social media site’s widespread layoffs. The leaked code included proprietary data for Twitter’s platform and internal tools, posing a cybersecurity risk for Twitter’s users. After months of being publicly accessible, Twitter sent a copyright infringement takedown notice to GitHub, which took down the listing.
Executives involved in the matter speculate that the person who leaked the code may have been one of the employees who were laid off or resigned last year when tech mogul Elon Musk bought the company. Since Musk’s purchase, Twitter’s revenue and earnings have fallen about 40%, and about 80% of its employees have either been laid off or moved to different companies.
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The leaked code could expose Twitter to cybersecurity threats. Hackers could discover vulnerabilities in the source code, potentially giving them access to private information about Twitter users or taking down the site from the inside. Ilia Kolochenko, founder of ImmuniWeb and a member of Europol Data Protection Experts Network, said the alleged security incident might have a severe impact on Twitter and its users if some critical parts of the code were exposed and misappropriated by cyber threat actors. For instance, source code of business-critical APIs that allow vetted third parties to remotely access sensitive data of Twitter users could expose critical security vulnerabilities that are undetectable from the outside.
Twitter is still considered one of the leading social media sites, particularly for professionals seeking a less formal space than LinkedIn. However, the way Twitter shed employees under Musk’s management raises concerns. Laid-off engineers could reveal hidden vulnerabilities afterward, and Twitter is likely to feel the effects of downsizing as downstream problems arise.
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The owner of the GitHub account that posted the leaked code went by the handle “FreeSpeechEnthusiast.” Twitter filed a request with the US District Court for the Northern District of California to ask GitHub, owned by Microsoft, to reveal the identity of this person and anyone else who downloaded the code. The code may have already been downloaded by various hackers, which opens the possibility for more data breaches to occur.
Despite the concerns of cybersecurity risks, on March 17, 2023, Elon Musk tweeted his decision to make “all code used to recommend tweets” open source on March 31, 2023. Musk admitted that the algorithm was overly complex and not fully understood internally, and he believed that people would discover many silly things. It seems possible that at least some of the leaked source code might eventually become publicly available.
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Overall, there appears to be a discrepancy between Twitter’s rewards versus cybersecurity risks. Twitter needs to invest in cybersecurity measures to ensure their users’ information remains secure, especially as they continue to downsize and deal with the fallout from the leaked source code.
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