The streaming service Twitch has been hacked, the platform confirmed Wednesday on Twitter. The data breach includes source coding for Twitch, an unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios and details surrounding creator payouts. The story was first reported by Video Game Chronicles.
The hack comes from an anonymous 4chan user who posted a 125GB torrent on a messaging board. The user claimed the torrent contained the entirety of Twitch and its commit history.
The user claimed Wednesday’s leak was only part one, hinting at more data breaches to come. They claimed the leak was meant to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space.” They also claimed the Twitch community is “a disgusting toxic cesspool”.
We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021
Also included in the leak is the following:
- The entirety of twitch.tv with comment history “going back to its early beginnings.”
- Source code for mobile, desktop, and video game console Twitch clients.
- Code related to proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch.
- An unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios.
- Data on other Twitch properties like IGDB and CurseForge.
- Twitch’s internal security tools
Three years’ worth of payout details for creators was also released, revealing more than 80 streamers who have been paid more than $1m by the streaming service.
Here's a more comprehensive list of leaked Twitch payouts (I will keep updating this thread as more things come out). pic.twitter.com/15JItvp6l4
— KnowSomething (@KnowS0mething) October 6, 2021
The hack is more focused on Twitch the company rather than users of the platform. Twitch user login information does not appear to be part of the data breach, however, this does not mean that it isn’t. As mentioned earlier, there is still the possibility of more sensitive data being released. It is recommended that users change their passwords and turn on two-step authentication for their accounts.
The story is still developing. Follow BackstageOL for more gaming news.
