(Bloomberg) – Portions of Twitter’s proprietary source code were leaked online up until last week, the company announced in a California court on Friday.
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The code that forms the basis for the web service’s various functions and internal tools was published on GitHub, the widely used code repository now owned by Microsoft Corp. is. GitHub complied with Twitter’s request to remove the data as part of copyright infringement and published Twitter’s request online. The account responsible for the post, called FreeSpeechEnthusiast, signed up on GitHub earlier this year and appears to have only uploaded the Twitter cache.
Twitter is now looking for the identity of the user behind that account, as well as the names and other information of all users who posted, downloaded, or uploaded the data. Elon Musk’s social network asks GitHub for the names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, social media profiles and IP addresses of these parties, according to its filing. The company has also launched an internal investigation into the leak, according to a New York Times report citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
GitHub generally does not comment on content removal decisions and noted the publication of the Twitter takedown request when Bloomberg was contacted for comment. Twitter’s email address for press inquiries continues to auto-reply with a poop emoji.
Disclosing the internal workings of Twitter can make the service more vulnerable to hacking attempts. The username chosen by the leaker appears to be designed to poke fun at Musk, who made a big deal out of restoring free speech to the platform when he took over the company late last year.
–Assisted by Shiyin Chen.
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