Twitch, a live video streaming service, was hacked and exposed 125GB data. A torrent file of the data dump was posted by an anonymous user in a 4chan thread (and later removed). The dump includes the source code of the company and details about how much money Twitch creators have earned.
Twitch admits breach, but isn't sure of the extent
An anonymous user claimed that he had leaked 125GB data from 6,000 internal Twitch Git repositories in a 4chan message. Ars saw the post today. Forum poster ridiculed Amazon's purchase of Twitch, saying, "Jeff Bezos paid 970 million for this, and we're giving away FOR FREE."
Hacker claimed that the leak was intended to disrupt and encourage competition between video streaming platforms. Further, the hacker stated that Twitch's community was "a disgusting, toxic cesspool."
Twitch admitted to the breach, but did not respond to Ars' questions. Twitch appears to not be aware of the full extent, and the company is still trying to figure out the details.
We are able to confirm that a breach occurred. Our teams are working quickly to determine the extent of the breach. As soon as more information becomes available, we will notify the community. We appreciate your patience. Twitch (@Twitch), October 6, 2021
The earnings of the top Twitch creators are revealed
Another thread on 4chan claimed that it also revealed "creator payouts reports from 2019 to now." Find out how much your favourite streamer really makes!
The 125GB archive is titled Part One, a reference to future leaks.
Ars has a small selection of data that shows the earnings of top Twitch users, along with their usernames. Sinoc, the game creator, posted an updated list. A Twitter user who looked at the dump provided a breakdown of the payouts.
Advertisement
The gross payouts of the top 100 highest-paid Twitch streamers from August 2019 until October 2021: pic.twitter.com/3Lj9pb2aBl KnowSomething (@KnowS0mething) October 6, 2021
Video Games Chronicle was confirmed by an anonymous Twitch source that the leaked data (including Twitch's source codes) is genuine. The company source claims that the data was obtained on Monday.
According to the 4chan poster, the data dump is:
The entire source code of twitch.tv, including the commit history starting at the beginning
Starting in 2019, creator payout reports
Twitch clients for mobile, desktop and console gaming
Twitch uses proprietary SDKs and AWS services internally
Data from "everyother property that Twitch has," including IGDB, CurseForge.
Amazon Game Studios has information about a new Steam competitor ("Vapor")
Twitch's internal red teaming tools are used by SOC teams (security officers)
Also, the dump reportedly includes Unity source code for a game called Vapeworld.
The leaked archive contains large ZIPs and portions that are quite large. It may take days to understand the full extent of the breach.
Twitter users claimed that encrypted passwords were also in the dump. They are asking Twitch users for two-factor authentication to change their passwords to protect themselves.
This hack adds more bad news to Twitch's plates and follows a long-awaited public response regarding hate raid issues. Users and bots dump vulgar and hateful language into the prominent chat feeds of Twitch during such raids.
NBC's tech investigation reporter Olivia Solon claims that all Amazon warehouse systems were affected by a network outage last night. However, the company will not confirm if this was related to the Twitch hack.
According to Solon
Amazon warehouse workers in the US were forced to stop work last night after their internal software crashed. No scanners worked. Amazon claims that the problem was caused by a network disruption, which was quickly fixed.
Amazon's 2014 acquisition in Twitch stated that the entity would be independent from Amazon. It isn't known if Twitch uses Amazon's rack space or its own server stack.