Extensive data theft from the Twitch streaming site

Twitch is known as the site where gamers broadcast their video game history live. A major data leak can cause serious problems for a service purchased from Amazon.

Streaming platform Twitch has fallen victim to a major data theft. A stranger posted a data packet on the network, which, according to him, contained the entire programming code for the service.

The Amazon subsidiary acknowledged that the reason for the tapping was: Unsecured data could be accessed from the Internet due to an error in the server configuration.

Twitch is mainly used by gamers to broadcast live the progress of video games. The site has created its own stars and it has a high audience.

Published data also includes lists of alleged revenue of twitch streamers. However, above all, removing the mask of the entire technical site can have dangerous consequences. “Since the source material has been leaked, it can be assumed that these are now being targeted by other cybercriminals,” said Rodger Trost from IT security firm F-Secure. “More hacks are expected to follow the platform,” he warned.

Login data is not explicitly affected

At the same time, Twitch stressed that there is currently no evidence that users’ login data has been compromised. In addition, the site usually does not store full credit card numbers, so it cannot be tapped. However the site reset – as a “precautionary measure” – is called stream keys, which can assign incoming live broadcast to individual users. This is to prevent twitch channels from being hijacked by others.

The published data, among other things, showed a huge revenue gap between the most important twitch streamers, some of whom earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, and less popular users. Many streamers confirmed that the leaked information about their earnings on Twitter was correct.

The published programming code also includes references to the yet-to-be-released competition service for the popular Steam gaming site and the internal software tools used to simulate hacker attacks on Twitches. “Jeff Bezos paid $ 970 million for it,” the man behind the leak on the 4Chan platform wrote in a swipe to the Amazon boss. “It’s free with us.”

The “Platformer” blog asked previous Twitch developers about the leak. Among other things, they said the platform did not take any precautionary measures against staff downloading large amounts of software code. Amazon, which has a reputation for strong IT security, bought back the Twitches in 2014, but the site still runs on its own security precautions, it said.