Parts of Twitter source code leaked online, court filing shows

[March 27, 2023]   (Reuters) - Some parts of Twitter Inc's source code have been leaked and the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk is seeking information on the person responsible, a legal filing showed.

A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed Twitter logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

According to the filing, "various excerpts" of Twitter's source code, which is used to run the company online, were posted on Github, a Microsoft-owned platform for sharing code for software development, by a user named 'FreeSpeechEnthusiast'.

Github said it took down the code on Friday at Twitter's request.

Twitter has asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to produce "All identifying information" associated with the 'FreeSpeechEnthusiast' user name, the March 24 filing showed.

Github did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on whether it has supplied such information. It also did not comment on how long Twitter's source code had been publicly available.

Twitter also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The news was first reported by the New York Times.

(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Nilutpal Timsina; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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