Some of Twitter"s source code was posted on the Microsoft-owned GitHub for an undetermined period of time. That is what Twitter says happened in a court filing on Friday, according to a New York Times report.
According to the court filing, Twitter discovered some of its source code was uploaded to GitHub on Friday. The software development site complied with a request from Twitter to remove the code from its site the same day. However, there"s no word on when that code was uploaded to GitHub. Twitter believes it may have been available on the service for "at least several months."
Twitter is now trying to get the courts to order GitHub to reveal the identity of the person who uploaded the source code, and also anyone who might have downloaded it afterward. The NYT reports, via unnamed sources, that Twitter execs believe the code was leaked by one of the company"s former employees who were laid off in late 2022 when Elon Musk took over the social network as its owner and CEO.
Of course, Musk and the remaining Twitter team members are likely wondering if anyone could use that leaked source code to hack into the social network. Twitter had a major outage in early March caused by its APIs failing. A hacker attack using Twitter source code could be even worse.