Disgruntled ex-employee leaks Twitter source code

Twitter has moved to have the code taken down

BY Matthew Sellers 28 Mar 2023

The search is on for one ex-worker among the 75% of the workforce who have been sacked.

Ever since Elon Musk reluctantly finalized his purchase of Twitter, he has been concerned about sabotage or leaks from disgruntled employees.

When he made mass staff cuts last November, he locked the offices and ask employees not to come in while the layoffs were being made. But it appears that the locked doors were not enough.

It has just been revealed that the company has suffered a major exposure of its intellectual property, with parts of its source code leaked online, according to a legal filing. The leak, which was confirmed by the social network, comes as the company struggles to reduce technical issues and reverse its business fortunes under Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44bn in October.

Twitter has moved to have the code taken down by sending a copyright infringement notice to GitHub, an online collaboration platform for software developers where the code was posted. GitHub has complied and taken down the code. It remains unclear how long the leaked code had been online, but it appeared to have been public for at least several months.

Twitter has also asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order GitHub to identify the person who shared the code and any other individuals who downloaded it. Executives handling the matter have surmised that whoever was responsible left the San Francisco-based company last year, according to two people briefed on the internal investigation.

Since Mr. Musk's acquisition of Twitter, about 75% of the company's 7,500 employees have been laid off or resigned. Twitter has launched an investigation into the leak, and early indications from examination of the code are that it was leaked by someone who left (or who was pushed from) the company last year.

The leak, which could expose vulnerabilities to hackers has just added to the social media giant’s woes – in an email to staff last week Musk valued the company at $20 billion, less than half of the amount he paid for it just 5 months ago.