Some parts of Twitter source code leaked online
A user shared the code on GitHub
Parts of the source code used to run social media site Twitter have leaked online, marking the latest challenge for a platform struggling to reduce technical issues since its takeover by Elon Musk late last year.
According to the New York Times, documents filed with the US District Court for the Northern District of California indicate that Twitter issued a subpoena on 24th March to GitHub, where a user identified as "FreeSpeechEnthusiast" shared parts of Twitter's source code without permission.
The subpoena aims to identify the individual responsible for sharing the code, who Twitter believes is a former employee. It also asks for information on any GitHub users who may have downloaded, shared or modified the source code data.
Twitter said in the filing that FreeSpeechEnthusiast's GitHub account had violated its copyrights.
GitHub took the code down from its platform the day it received the subpoena. It shared details of the request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), naming the code as "proprietary source code for Twitter's platform and internal tools."
The DMCA, which was signed into law in the US in 1998, was created to safeguard copyrighted material on the internet.
It's unclear how long the leaked code was accessible online, but it seems to have been at least several months.
The leak raises concerns about the security of Twitter's platform, as well as the company's ability to protect its IP.
Twitter is likely to face increased scrutiny in the coming days as it investigates the matter and tries to identify the person responsible for the leak.
Two individuals briefed on the internal investigation told the New York Times that executives overseeing the matter have concluded the individual responsible for the leak left Twitter last year.
Following Musk's acquisition of the social media platform for $44 billion in October, approximately three quarters of the firm's 7,500 employees have either resigned or been laid off.
The sources further noted that the executives only became aware of the source code leak recently.
Earlier this month, Musk announced that Twitter would release "all code used to recommend tweets" to the public on 31st March. He claimed Twitter's algorithm is "overly complex & not fully understood internally," and predicted that people would discover "silly" issues in the code.
He also mentioned that making the code transparent would be "incredibly embarrassing" initially.
It is unclear whether the leak is linked to Musk's announcement.
Musk recently said that Twitter's current valuation is around $20 billion, less than half what he paid for the platform just five months ago.
The billionaire and world's richest man indicated that Twitter employees will receive stock awards based on this estimated $20 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Despite the drop in value, Musk remains optimistic about the company's future and sees a path for Twitter to achieve a valuation greater than $250 billion in coming years.