Twitch Suffers from Massive Leak
- Paul Thurrott
- Oct 06, 2021
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According to a report, Amazon’s Twitch gaming service has been hacked, with the attacker leaking the service’s source code and user payout details.
The attacker posted a 125 GB torrent to 4chan forum site, stating that they wanted to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space,” and because Twitch’s “community is a disgusting toxic cesspool”. The report verified that the file is publicly downloadable.
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Twitch says it is aware of the breach and is investigating. But the damage is done: among the leaked data is “the entirety of Twitch’s source code with a full comment history, creator payouts dating back to 2019, the mobile, desktop, and console Twitch clients, proprietary software development kits (SDKs) and AWS services, other Twitch properties including IGBD and CurseForge, an abandoned Steam competitor called Vapor, and internal “red teaming” tools that employees use for security purposes. In other words, the motherlode.
Several Twitch creators have earned several million dollars each from the service, the leaks show, and over 80 have made over one million dollars.
If you are a Twitch user, move quickly to enable two-factor authentication (2FA), since it appears that the service’s encrypted passwords have also been leaked.