Amazon’s live-streaming platform Twitch recently fell victim to a major leak that exposed the site’s source code, top streamer’s earnings, and more. The company acknowledged the leak, stating: “We have learned that some data was exposed to the internet due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party. Our teams are working with urgency to investigate the incident.”
Techspot reports that the Amazon-owned live-streaming platform Twitch has blamed a “malicious third party” for the recent massive leak of the website’s data. Data leaked included the entire source code of the service as well as the earnings of many of the platform’s top streamers.
Participant hold their laptops in front of an illuminated wall at the annual Chaos Computer Club (CCC) computer hackers’ congress, called 29C3, on December 28, 2012 in Hamburg, Germany. The 29th Chaos Communication Congress (29C3) attracts hundreds of participants worldwide annually to engage in workshops and lectures discussing the role of technology in society and its future. (Photo by Patrick Lux/Getty Images)
A link to a 125GB torrent containing the data was posted to 4Chan earlier this week, with the user posting it stating that they aimed to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space” because “their community is a disgusting toxic cesspool.”
The leak is alleged to be “part one” of more to come and included source code for the website, comment history as far back as 2019, clients, proprietary SDKs and AWS services, a VR Chat game, and an unreleased Steam game client competitor called Vapor that was being developed by Amazon Game Studios.
Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin press event ( Joe Raedle /Getty)
Some reported that that the leak included encrypted passwords and encouraged users to change their login details and enable two-factor authentication. Twitch later stated that it was resetting user’s stream key “out of an abundance of caution.” Twitch has said that there is no indication so far that login credentials or payment details had been exposed.
Many were shocked by data in the leak that revealed how much many top streamers on the platform were earning. According to Twitch’s payout estimates — which includes money paid to streamers from subscriber fees, bits, and ad-streaming but does not include money made from Twitch contracts or donations — many top streamers are earning millions of dollars on the platform.
One popular Canadian streamer, Félix Lengyel, better known by his online handle xQcOW, made $8.5 million between August 2019 and October 2021 from Twitch alone.
Twitch has released a full statement on the situation, stating:
We have learned that some data was exposed to the internet due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party. Our teams are working with urgency to investigate the incident.
As the investigation is ongoing, we are still in the process of understanding the impact in detail. We understand that this situation raises concerns, and we want to address some of those here while our investigation continues.
At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed. We are continuing to investigate.
Additionally, full credit card numbers are not stored by Twitch, so full credit card numbers were not exposed.
Read more at Techspot here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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