Twitch confirmed a hack on Wednesday that leaked the Amazon-owned streaming platform’s source code, as well as a long list of Twitch’s highest-paid streamers. Information from the data breach was posted on 4chan before spreading widely,
Twitch, the popular, Amazon-owned streaming platform, is contending with an unprecedented hack of its website. On the morning of Oct.6, an anonymous 4chan user published a 235 GB torrent file that included Twitch’s source code, creator earnings details, and other confidential information. The leak does not appear to include personal information on Twitch streamers and viewers, like user IDs or passwords; a lot of what was made public is centered on internal Twitch documentation. Twitch says that it’s still working to understand the scale of what was stolen, and that the company will update streamers and Twitch community members with more information when it’s available. Here’s what we know right now. The leaked information shared on Wednesday includes three years’ worth of creator earnings payouts, going back to 2019. This data has been collated online and encompasses the top 10,000 streamers. A number of streamers, on social media and elsewhere, have confirmed that these numbers match their internal Twitch analytics, but some say their numbers are off. Hackers also say they’ve got access to “commit history going back to [Twitch.tv’s] early beginnings,” which means that there could be saved “snapshots” of each iteration of Twitch as far back as its creation. Source code, too, for Twitch’s mobile, desktop, and console clients has also been made available online, as has “code related to proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch,” according to The Verge. Data for other Twitch properties, like video game database IGBD and mod management system CurseForge, has also been leaked alongside security tools and files related to a reportedly in-development Steam competitor codenamed Vapor, designed by Amazon Game Studios. According to Vice, information shared in the leak is not particularly “sensitive,” at least to Twitch; the information shared is more harmful to streamers themselves. As reported by The Verge, the information published Wednesday is labeled “part one,” which implies that more hacked data may be available. Twitch has not yet commented specifically on the data that’s been stolen. The short answer here is yes, you should change your password, even if there is little evidence suggesting that personal Twitch account information — aside from creator earnings — has been compromised. It’s possible that the Twitch hacker has more information, however, that could include personal information, including passwords and other sensitive data.
