What do we know about Twitch's gigantic data leak

The leaked information contains the source code, creator earnings, and lots of details on security tools and products. And it could be just the beginning

Photo: via Unsplash Twitch, the streaming platform owned by Amazon used mainly by gamers, was the victim of a data leak on October 6 for more than 100 gigabytes. Confidential information about the company - such as the source code - and streamers' earnings, which some of them have confirmed to be accurate, went online.

A 125 Gb torrent was released on 4chan's bulletin board by an anonymous user and can be downloaded by anyone, as the Video games chronicle site first reported. A message accompanying the torrent states that the data was stolen to "promote breakups and competition in online video streaming". If Jeff Bezos "paid 970 million for this", wrote the publisher of the file, "we give it away for free".

Among the data that appeared online are the Twitch source code, the revision history , three years of details on creator payments, all Twitch.tv data, the code relating to proprietary SDKs and internal Amazon web services used by the platform. There is also data on a Steam competitor Amazon Game Studios game store prototype, codenamed Vapor, information on other Twitch properties such as Igdb and CurseForge, and internal security tools.

Documents show that top Twitch streamers have earned millions of dollars from the Amazon-owned company over the past two years. Eighty-one creators earned over $ 1 million. RPG channel CriticalRole earned 9.6 in this period.

Twitch has confirmed the breach and said it is "working urgently" to understand the extent of the breach. In a statement posted on Twitter, the company said it "will update the community as more information becomes available." The anonymous leaker has stated that this is only the first part of the content he owns, but has not specified what else he intends to release.



We can confirm a breach has taken place . Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us.

- Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021 | appears to include passwords or Twitch user account information, but that doesn't mean that this information isn't in the possession of the infringer anyway. Therefore, it is a good idea to change your Twitch password and enable two-factor authentication of the account. Although Twitch has confirmed the data breach, it is unclear exactly how much data was stolen or how.

Tech-savvy reporter Casey Newton spoke in his newsletter with two former Twitch engineers, according to the which the breach would be due to the poor security measures implemented by the streaming platform. For cyber protection research vice president of cybersecurity firm Acronis, Candid Wuest, “the leaked data could contain almost the entire Twitch fingerprint, making it one of the most serious data breaches of recent times. The 125 GB of data stolen so far may be just the beginning, according to comments from the hacker who claimed responsibility for the attack. Internal networking plans and marketing plans for future products may now be misused by cybercriminals or sold to competitors. If the source code is exposed, we will see a spike in vulnerabilities discovered in related software. Having access to the source code makes it easy to find the weak spots. ”

Twitch has been criticized by creators and users who believe the site does not act enough against problematic members of its community who fill the streams with insults and verbal abuse thanks also to bots. Last month a group of streamers called on other channels and viewers to boycott the site for 24 hours in response to so-called "hate raids."

The same day the campaign was initially announced, Twitch posted a thread on Twitter explaining that he was attempting to stop the hate raids. The platform announced new tools to increase security and also sued two users over their online behavior.


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Topics

Amazon Cybersecurity Privacy Security Twitch Videogame globalData.fldTopic = " Amazon, Cybersecurity, Privacy, Security, Twitch, Videogame "

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