Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Twitch Says Hack Impacted ‘Small Fraction of Users’

Amazon-owned live streaming service Twitch on Friday shared another update on the recent data breach. The company says it’s confident that only a “small fraction of users” are affected and that customer impact is minimal.

The company said the breach was a result of a server configuration change that allowed the hackers to gain access to its systems.

Amazon-owned live streaming service Twitch on Friday shared another update on the recent data breach. The company says it’s confident that only a “small fraction of users” are affected and that customer impact is minimal.

The company said the breach was a result of a server configuration change that allowed the hackers to gain access to its systems.

In its latest update, the company said passwords have not been exposed and systems storing login credentials have not been accessed by the attackers. It also pointed out that full payment card numbers or bank information has not been compromised.

“The exposed data primarily contained documents from Twitch’s source code repository, as well as a subset of creator payout data,” the company said.

Twitch has millions of active streamers and their streams are watched by tens of millions of people.

The breach of the company’s systems came to light earlier this month, when a link pointing to more than 100 GB of files allegedly obtained from Twitch systems was posted on the image-based bulletin board 4chan. The anonymous individual — or individuals — who leaked the files said their goal was to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space.” They suggested this was not all of the data stolen from the company.

“[We] have completely pwned them, and in part one, are releasing the source code from almost 6,000 internal Git repositories,” the hacker(s) said.

The leaked data appears to include source code for twitch.tv, proprietary SDKs, an unreleased Steam competitor developed by Amazon Game Studios, internal tools and services, as well as the mobile, desktop and video game console clients.

Sergey Shcherbel, security expert at Kaspersky, told SecurityWeek that the source code likely comes from a Git server compromised by the attackers.

The leaked files also include documents showing how much the top Twitch creators have earned since 2019. Some streamers have confirmed that the information in these documents appears to be accurate.

Twitch confirmed suffering a breach shortly after the files were made public. While the company says there is no evidence that login credentials have been compromised, it did inform users shortly after the hack came to light that, “out of an abundance of caution,” it has reset all stream keys. Users have been provided instructions on how to obtain new stream keys.

This is not the first time Twitch has suffered a data breach. In 2015, the company informed users that their account information, including email addresses and passwords, might have been accessed by an unauthorized third party.

Related: Nokia-Owned SAC Wireless Discloses Data Breach

Related: Controversial Web Host Epik Confirms Customer Data Exposed in Breach

Related: Video Creation Service Promo.com Discloses Data Breach

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Management & Strategy

SecurityWeek examines how a layoff-induced influx of experienced professionals into the job seeker market is affecting or might affect, the skills gap and recruitment...

Cybercrime

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Data Breaches

LastPass DevOp engineer's home computer hacked and implanted with keylogging malware as part of a sustained cyberattack that exfiltrated corporate data from the cloud...

Application Security

PayPal is alerting roughly 35,000 individuals that their accounts have been targeted in a credential stuffing campaign.