"Jeff Bezos paid $970 million for this, we’re giving it away FOR FREE."
October 6, 2021 11:03 AM Subscribe
First reported anonymously at Video Games Chronicle, and then confirmed by Kotaku and by Engadget, a major data breach at Twitch has put over 125 GB of data into the wild.
Details in the leak include:
-- Entirety of source code to twitch.tv, with commit history going back to its early beginnings, along with mobile, desktop and video game console Twitch clients
-- Various proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch
-- Every other property that Twitch owns including IGDB and CurseForge
-- An as-yet unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios
-- Twitch SOC internal red teaming tools
-- Details of all Twitch Partner payouts from 2019 to present
Twitch confirmed the hack in a Tweet, without any further confirmation of what was accessed.
Details in the leak include:
-- Entirety of source code to twitch.tv, with commit history going back to its early beginnings, along with mobile, desktop and video game console Twitch clients
-- Various proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch
-- Every other property that Twitch owns including IGDB and CurseForge
-- An as-yet unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios
-- Twitch SOC internal red teaming tools
-- Details of all Twitch Partner payouts from 2019 to present
Twitch confirmed the hack in a Tweet, without any further confirmation of what was accessed.
Man, I only recognize like 3 or 4 of those Twitch Partners, maybe, tops? Time to go tie an onion to my belt and start hollerin' at clouds....
posted by Kyol at 11:18 AM on October 6, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by Kyol at 11:18 AM on October 6, 2021 [16 favorites]
The earnings leak is by far the more interesting:
Twitch Earnings Leaderboard
The source code is interesting to other hackers, especially if it interacts with Amazon. But you're not going to spin up a Twitch competitor with it.
posted by meowzilla at 11:21 AM on October 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
Twitch Earnings Leaderboard
The source code is interesting to other hackers, especially if it interacts with Amazon. But you're not going to spin up a Twitch competitor with it.
posted by meowzilla at 11:21 AM on October 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
An anonymous hacker claims to have leaked the entirety of Twitch, including its source code and user payout information. The user posted a 125GB torrent link to 4chan on Wednesday, stating that the leak was intended to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space” because “their community is a disgusting toxic cesspool”.Huh. I'm surprised to say I agree with this anonymous lad--Twitch's community IS a toxic cesspool, targeting mostly women and people of color.
Something tells me anon and I are coming at this from different sides. Horseshoe theory, right?
posted by Mayor West at 11:24 AM on October 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
Whoops!
posted by Windopaene at 11:25 AM on October 6, 2021
posted by Windopaene at 11:25 AM on October 6, 2021
None of the top 50 earners seem to be anything other than bros, though I can't be positive. Even if there's one or two women or nb folks, still, it's bad. Real bad. I say, burn it down.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:26 AM on October 6, 2021
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:26 AM on October 6, 2021
Well, the very top earner on that board is Critical Role, which is neither bro-y nor toxic.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:28 AM on October 6, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:28 AM on October 6, 2021 [13 favorites]
But you're not going to spin up a Twitch competitor with it.
What's so weird about this leak is that you can already spin up a Twitch competitor. Seriously, go look at the off-the-shelf offerings from the digital video streaming platform of your choice--you can either get a toolkit to roll your own cloud-hosted service, or pay extra to have them host if for you. Rights management might be tricky, but you could probably make a phone call today and have something Twitch-like running by next week. It's not like there's a huge secret to how the technology works; all the value is in the community and the advertising relationships.
posted by Mayor West at 11:28 AM on October 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
What's so weird about this leak is that you can already spin up a Twitch competitor. Seriously, go look at the off-the-shelf offerings from the digital video streaming platform of your choice--you can either get a toolkit to roll your own cloud-hosted service, or pay extra to have them host if for you. Rights management might be tricky, but you could probably make a phone call today and have something Twitch-like running by next week. It's not like there's a huge secret to how the technology works; all the value is in the community and the advertising relationships.
posted by Mayor West at 11:28 AM on October 6, 2021 [12 favorites]
Ah, that's a better leaderboard, meowzilla, and I can see the handful of streamers I sortakinda follow make a decent living for what they do. Honestly I mostly wait for their edited highlights on youtube, because I just can't get into twitch chat - either the streamer spends 90% of their time doing shout outs to people as they join and I'm left going "who?", or they're having a conversation with random people in a thousand+ person chat and it's completely incomprehensible. I know a couple of streamers that recognize that it's not really a (lopsided) 1:1 chat system, but an awful lot of it is just noise.
posted by Kyol at 11:34 AM on October 6, 2021
posted by Kyol at 11:34 AM on October 6, 2021
The only person in the Top 100 I follow is KitBoga and I'm surprised he doesn't make more.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 11:43 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 11:43 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I kind of want to look at some of the leaked data, but as a programmer I definitely do not want to download illegally acquired source code. Apparently there's a lot of server-side security stuff in there, it's unclear if user accounts specifically have been compromised but the infrastructure definitely has been
posted by JZig at 11:43 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by JZig at 11:43 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
A previous top streamer broke down all his income here: Disguised Toast. It's likely that you can double or even triple some of these leaked numbers based on donations, sponsored streams, and appearances for their full income; the leaked data only represents Twitch's subscription revenue.
To make a Twitch competitor, all you need is truckfuls of money to lure away the popular names. Mixer tried it but still failed; YouTube is in the middle of it.
posted by meowzilla at 11:44 AM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
To make a Twitch competitor, all you need is truckfuls of money to lure away the popular names. Mixer tried it but still failed; YouTube is in the middle of it.
posted by meowzilla at 11:44 AM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
there's a big thing going on Twitch right now where streamers with more oppressed identities have organized and demanded that Twitch provide basic tools that helps them avoid getting doxxed, their chats flooded with hateful messages, and other hate raid-related abuses
this is after years of repeated asks for tools and policies to limit the toxicity occurring on the platform that Twitch, like Facebook, has just allowed to run rampant. it doesn't make them $$ to look after their non-mass-revenue generating streamers so even though the changes folks have been asking for are technically simple and you'd be able to get all of it done in a single sprint, Twitch has been like 'meh! check out all of this other super cool shit that is way more technically complex and literally involves high level deals with record studios'
I think another thing to note is that, like in the FB convo, telling people to just up and start a new platform, especially the streamers who aren't the ones making $$ and don't have the million+ followings is like... really incredibly shitty and dismissive. which billion $ VC fund is going to go 'oh hey, a streaming platform for a much smaller audience that cares about ethics? here, take the money you need for that, we can def see $$ coming in from advertisers'? because it's gonna take a fuckton of $$ to build a streaming platform and then also to have enough capacity to host live video streams requiring gigabytes of data transfer per viewer
someone hacking Twitch and dropping their code is definitely one way you can take out some of the cost of starting up a new platform while also damaging the juggernaut but ultimately you're always going to run into that $$ wall that creates really fucking shitty conditions for everyone but cishet white dudes. and until you can actually get that $$ redistributed, you're never going to see anybody but Facebook or Twitch or Youtube or Uber or all of these other fuckass-run and fuckass-funded platforms that prioritize revenue above everything else reign supreme
posted by paimapi at 11:57 AM on October 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
this is after years of repeated asks for tools and policies to limit the toxicity occurring on the platform that Twitch, like Facebook, has just allowed to run rampant. it doesn't make them $$ to look after their non-mass-revenue generating streamers so even though the changes folks have been asking for are technically simple and you'd be able to get all of it done in a single sprint, Twitch has been like 'meh! check out all of this other super cool shit that is way more technically complex and literally involves high level deals with record studios'
I think another thing to note is that, like in the FB convo, telling people to just up and start a new platform, especially the streamers who aren't the ones making $$ and don't have the million+ followings is like... really incredibly shitty and dismissive. which billion $ VC fund is going to go 'oh hey, a streaming platform for a much smaller audience that cares about ethics? here, take the money you need for that, we can def see $$ coming in from advertisers'? because it's gonna take a fuckton of $$ to build a streaming platform and then also to have enough capacity to host live video streams requiring gigabytes of data transfer per viewer
someone hacking Twitch and dropping their code is definitely one way you can take out some of the cost of starting up a new platform while also damaging the juggernaut but ultimately you're always going to run into that $$ wall that creates really fucking shitty conditions for everyone but cishet white dudes. and until you can actually get that $$ redistributed, you're never going to see anybody but Facebook or Twitch or Youtube or Uber or all of these other fuckass-run and fuckass-funded platforms that prioritize revenue above everything else reign supreme
posted by paimapi at 11:57 AM on October 6, 2021 [18 favorites]
The original post on 4chan read:
posted by wesleyac at 12:25 PM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
We bring to you today an extremely poggers leak:Mayor West — unless the #DoBetterTwitch is some next-level irony that I'm just not Online enough to understand, it seems like the hackers are approximately on the same page as you (which makes 4chan an odd venue to share this, but whatever)
Twitch is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.
Their community is also a disgusting toxic cesspool, so to foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space, we have completely pwned them, and in part one, are releasing the source code from almost 6,000 internal Git repositories, including:
> Entirety of twitch.tv, with commit history going back to its early beginnings
> Mobile, desktop and video game console Twitch clients
> Various proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch
> Every other property that Twitch owns including IGDB and CurseForge
> An unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios
> Twitch SOC internal red teaming tools (lol)
AND: Creator payout reports from 2019 until now. Find out how much your favorite streamer is really making!
Torrent (128GB): [removed, since i don't think mefi admins would be happy about the magnet link being here]
Repository listing: https://dpaste.org/MvoM
Jeff Bezos paid $970 million for this, we're giving it away FOR FREE.
#DoBetterTwitch
posted by wesleyac at 12:25 PM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
Many folks here seem to be vastly underestimating what a bad idea it is to use this leaked code to make a Twitch competitor. If Twitch/Amazon even slightly suspects you've used their code in your competing project/company they will sue you into the earth and one way or another they will win.
This isn't "Free as in speech", it isn't even "Free as in beer", this is "Free as in escaped tiger."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:27 PM on October 6, 2021 [64 favorites]
This isn't "Free as in speech", it isn't even "Free as in beer", this is "Free as in escaped tiger."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:27 PM on October 6, 2021 [64 favorites]
Thinking about this more — I'm curious whether this was an actual hack, or just an employee or ex-employee who decided to leak things and make it seem like a hack. The second seems much more likely on the whole, although it's also quite risky for that person if that is the case.
I don't think any serious company who's planning to compete with Twitch would even look at the code, but I expect that the financials would be pretty interesting to competitors, and I doubt it would even be illegal for competitors to use that information? (IANAL, though)
Other than that, I expect this leak will be useful to people who are interested in hacking Twitch and want to be able to find vulnerabilities from looking at the source code, although I don't know how much that'll actually move the needle on their risk of getting hacked more — I'd only expect the source code being leaked to be a major threat if it was quite badly written in the first place.
posted by wesleyac at 12:45 PM on October 6, 2021
I don't think any serious company who's planning to compete with Twitch would even look at the code, but I expect that the financials would be pretty interesting to competitors, and I doubt it would even be illegal for competitors to use that information? (IANAL, though)
Other than that, I expect this leak will be useful to people who are interested in hacking Twitch and want to be able to find vulnerabilities from looking at the source code, although I don't know how much that'll actually move the needle on their risk of getting hacked more — I'd only expect the source code being leaked to be a major threat if it was quite badly written in the first place.
posted by wesleyac at 12:45 PM on October 6, 2021
as a programmer I definitely do not want to download illegally acquired source code
As a programmer I’m very interested in it but also terrified of accidentally reproducing it somewhere. Is that what you mean?
posted by atoxyl at 12:51 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
As a programmer I’m very interested in it but also terrified of accidentally reproducing it somewhere. Is that what you mean?
posted by atoxyl at 12:51 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
The payouts for streamers aren't really a secret - you can make a pretty good guess from their subcounts, which are already public for a lot of streamers. The power of good data visualization, I guess.
I'm concerned about what other personal info may have been leaked, like payout info (name, address, credit card, SSN...) and phone numbers. I hope Twitch publicizes more detail soon - even as a random viewer and not a streamer, I have my Amazon account linked, which has my real name on it, and I have no clue if it's included in this leak and I'm not about to DL an illegal 128GB torrent just to find out.
posted by airmail at 1:11 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm concerned about what other personal info may have been leaked, like payout info (name, address, credit card, SSN...) and phone numbers. I hope Twitch publicizes more detail soon - even as a random viewer and not a streamer, I have my Amazon account linked, which has my real name on it, and I have no clue if it's included in this leak and I'm not about to DL an illegal 128GB torrent just to find out.
posted by airmail at 1:11 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
So how sincerely held do people think the "Twitch is a disgusting toxic cesspool so imma make it leak" reasoning is?
Because to my mind this is going to do little to make Twitch properly moderate its community, but will do a loooot to make streamers lives more difficult? (Kappa no subs you already rich Kappa LUL less $$$ than Destiny LUL etc etc)
Which, sure, boo hoo poor professional gamers - but can't decide if this is someone who's so done with Twitch that they want to just hurt the place (no downhill from here!), or if the reasoning is a smokescreen?
Okay, so, tinfoil hat etc etc but what if actual goal is harming their competition? Partly cos of tone ('foster more disruption' reads as deeply ironic corporate speak to me) mostly for reasons Mayor West & Mr. Encyclopedia give, I don't think they believe this will spawn a Twitch competitor. So, what if disruption they actually want (and know the cesspool discourse will distract) is to Twitch's 'internal streamer market'? And this leak is by bitter underperforming streamers?
posted by litleozy at 1:20 PM on October 6, 2021
Because to my mind this is going to do little to make Twitch properly moderate its community, but will do a loooot to make streamers lives more difficult? (Kappa no subs you already rich Kappa LUL less $$$ than Destiny LUL etc etc)
Which, sure, boo hoo poor professional gamers - but can't decide if this is someone who's so done with Twitch that they want to just hurt the place (no downhill from here!), or if the reasoning is a smokescreen?
Okay, so, tinfoil hat etc etc but what if actual goal is harming their competition? Partly cos of tone ('foster more disruption' reads as deeply ironic corporate speak to me) mostly for reasons Mayor West & Mr. Encyclopedia give, I don't think they believe this will spawn a Twitch competitor. So, what if disruption they actually want (and know the cesspool discourse will distract) is to Twitch's 'internal streamer market'? And this leak is by bitter underperforming streamers?
posted by litleozy at 1:20 PM on October 6, 2021
unless the #DoBetterTwitch is some next-level irony that I'm just not Online enough to understand, it seems like the hackers are approximately on the same page as you (which makes 4chan an odd venue to share this, but whatever)
I find it incredibly hard to believe anyone did this in an attempt to foster a better and more diverse streaming community inside or outside of Twitch. I would lay way more money on it being some reactionary group of edgelords mad because Twitch removed the PogChamp emote when the guy they used for the image tweeted out his vocal support for the 1/6 insurrectionists.
Twitch could and should absolutely put more moderation in place to prevent the cesspools that do indeed infect many communities, but it's way better at it in my experience than just about any other streaming platform and the content creators have a lot of control over their own communities.
posted by Room 101 at 1:24 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I find it incredibly hard to believe anyone did this in an attempt to foster a better and more diverse streaming community inside or outside of Twitch. I would lay way more money on it being some reactionary group of edgelords mad because Twitch removed the PogChamp emote when the guy they used for the image tweeted out his vocal support for the 1/6 insurrectionists.
Twitch could and should absolutely put more moderation in place to prevent the cesspools that do indeed infect many communities, but it's way better at it in my experience than just about any other streaming platform and the content creators have a lot of control over their own communities.
posted by Room 101 at 1:24 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I find it incredibly hard to believe anyone did this in an attempt to foster a better and more diverse streaming community inside or outside of Twitch.
+1, this sounds like someone who's really mad at hot tub streamers.
posted by airmail at 1:41 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
+1, this sounds like someone who's really mad at hot tub streamers.
posted by airmail at 1:41 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
+1, this sounds like someone who's really mad at hot tub streamers.
I only saw one such streamer in the top 25. I mean yeah lots of bro types gonna get angry that women can make money too, but there's much more money being made by folks like Ninja and that Hasan dude.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:51 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I only saw one such streamer in the top 25. I mean yeah lots of bro types gonna get angry that women can make money too, but there's much more money being made by folks like Ninja and that Hasan dude.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:51 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
This isn't going to hurt Twitch. It's going to help them, by reinforcing and more broadly disseminating the message that it's a way to get rich by sitting in your gaming chair at home and doing stuff you were doing anyway. It will make more kids want to be Twitch streamers, no help people build competitors or put pressure on Twitch to change any of their practices or functionality.
posted by primethyme at 1:54 PM on October 6, 2021
posted by primethyme at 1:54 PM on October 6, 2021
The takeaway for me is that they were legitimately developing Vapor-ware to compete with Steam.
posted by dangerousdan at 1:58 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by dangerousdan at 1:58 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Twitch could and should absolutely put more moderation in place to prevent the cesspools that do indeed infect many communities
it's not about just getting moderators, it's that 1) they built the fucking /raid function and could've easily disabled that feature flag while they figured out a way to curb harassment, 2) individuals were able to hack together third-party, anti-harassment tools for free that were better than the tools being offered by an Amazon-owned platform with a valuation of $15 billion and a fuckton more money and resources than their next competitor, and 3) the fact that they only started working on these tools after a coordinated mass strike across the platform that took a shitload of work when some product owner could've easily said 'hey, let's build in anti-harassment tools, that'll be good look'
it shouldn't take anywhere near this much effort to get at least one of your product teams working on curbing harassment on a platform that everyone openly admits to containing some incredibly toxic communities
posted by paimapi at 2:05 PM on October 6, 2021 [14 favorites]
it's not about just getting moderators, it's that 1) they built the fucking /raid function and could've easily disabled that feature flag while they figured out a way to curb harassment, 2) individuals were able to hack together third-party, anti-harassment tools for free that were better than the tools being offered by an Amazon-owned platform with a valuation of $15 billion and a fuckton more money and resources than their next competitor, and 3) the fact that they only started working on these tools after a coordinated mass strike across the platform that took a shitload of work when some product owner could've easily said 'hey, let's build in anti-harassment tools, that'll be good look'
it shouldn't take anywhere near this much effort to get at least one of your product teams working on curbing harassment on a platform that everyone openly admits to containing some incredibly toxic communities
posted by paimapi at 2:05 PM on October 6, 2021 [14 favorites]
I guess the reason that I'm OK with taking this at face value (for the moment) is that I really don't understand what the point of releasing this and misleading about motives would be? Like, it's possible that it's to discredit the people who earnestly use the #DoBetterTwitch hashtag/etc, but will that actually happen? I'd be surprised if it changed anyone's mind either way.
If the goal was to target people who are leftist/"woke"/whatever, why reveal all the amounts people are making, rather than just dumping the source code (to prove that the leak is legitimate) and the amount Hasan and whatever other leftist/women/whatever streamers are making and leave out everyone else? Most of the streamers making the most aren't people I'd expect the 4chan crowd to be really mad at, except insofar as they're basically mad at everyone all the time.
If the idea is that Twitch is too "woke" and this leak will somehow destroy them (it won't), what do they think the alternative is? Youtube seems like the main one, and I think that it's pretty similar in terms of content policies? As paimapi points out, starting a streaming platform is a money game, and the people with money don't care whether there's Nazi shit on their platforms, they'll just do whatever makes the most money, which is likely pretty similar to what Twitch and YT are currently doing (ban people who do things that are really egregious for the good PR, but don't fix any of the systemic issues/mod tools/etc because there's no money in that).
I guess I also don't understand why someone mad about Twitch being a toxic cesspool would choose to release this stuff in this way, either, though, so maybe I just shouldn't speculate about motives at all.
posted by wesleyac at 2:11 PM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
If the goal was to target people who are leftist/"woke"/whatever, why reveal all the amounts people are making, rather than just dumping the source code (to prove that the leak is legitimate) and the amount Hasan and whatever other leftist/women/whatever streamers are making and leave out everyone else? Most of the streamers making the most aren't people I'd expect the 4chan crowd to be really mad at, except insofar as they're basically mad at everyone all the time.
If the idea is that Twitch is too "woke" and this leak will somehow destroy them (it won't), what do they think the alternative is? Youtube seems like the main one, and I think that it's pretty similar in terms of content policies? As paimapi points out, starting a streaming platform is a money game, and the people with money don't care whether there's Nazi shit on their platforms, they'll just do whatever makes the most money, which is likely pretty similar to what Twitch and YT are currently doing (ban people who do things that are really egregious for the good PR, but don't fix any of the systemic issues/mod tools/etc because there's no money in that).
I guess I also don't understand why someone mad about Twitch being a toxic cesspool would choose to release this stuff in this way, either, though, so maybe I just shouldn't speculate about motives at all.
posted by wesleyac at 2:11 PM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
> I would lay way more money on it being some reactionary group of edgelords mad because Twitch removed the PogChamp emote when the guy they used for the image tweeted out his vocal support for the 1/6 insurrectionists.
That would be a hell of a lot of work to retaliate for a stupid GIF. Not to mention pointless, since for a Twitch user to do this would be shitting where they eat.
My guess is somebody probably tried to blackmail Amazon, and Amazon wouldn't play so they torrented these files as a proof of threat.
What they're threatening to expose next is likely going to be a lot more dangerous to Amazon. Code dumps are interesting only to a very limited number of people (primarily people looking for attack vectors) who might or might not be able to find anything useful in them. A dump of user data will cause a whole lot more damage a whole lot faster.
posted by at by at 2:14 PM on October 6, 2021 [8 favorites]
That would be a hell of a lot of work to retaliate for a stupid GIF. Not to mention pointless, since for a Twitch user to do this would be shitting where they eat.
My guess is somebody probably tried to blackmail Amazon, and Amazon wouldn't play so they torrented these files as a proof of threat.
What they're threatening to expose next is likely going to be a lot more dangerous to Amazon. Code dumps are interesting only to a very limited number of people (primarily people looking for attack vectors) who might or might not be able to find anything useful in them. A dump of user data will cause a whole lot more damage a whole lot faster.
posted by at by at 2:14 PM on October 6, 2021 [8 favorites]
I’m really uncomfortable with the leaking of earnings info for every partnered streamer. I think it’s going to hurt a lot of small streamers.
posted by interogative mood at 3:12 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 3:12 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
As a heads up - if you're a Twitch user, you should change your passwords directly, but in particular if you set up your account pre-2016 and haven't changed your passwords since, people have found a bug in the leaked code that will permit access to your account when those hashes are leaked, which seems to be coming due in the second wave of this breach, coming soon to a torrent near you.
posted by mhoye at 3:19 PM on October 6, 2021
posted by mhoye at 3:19 PM on October 6, 2021
Also I’m terrified that this portends a bigger breach of AWS and Amazon. That’s going to wreck my whole year.
posted by interogative mood at 3:24 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 3:24 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Jesus I’m 52 and when I read that someone “pwned” someone it’s like they said they got jiggy with it. Is that still a thing? I don’t care about twitch (anything with millions of comments scrolling by = no thanks) but I hope they find and hammer the shit out of the hacker. Or is twitch the evil empire here? Clue me in.
posted by freecellwizard at 3:25 PM on October 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by freecellwizard at 3:25 PM on October 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
It would be interesting to check out twitch's early code to see what their MVP looked like, and how much of it was held together by what flavor of used bugglegum. Probably they didn't succeed due to code quality, but due to business and/or first mover, but I like to check my assumptions.
There is some risk of seeing something that somehow taints your future work. A software patent is the main worrying thing, except their MVP probably didn't implement anything (knowingly) patented.
posted by joeyh at 3:30 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
There is some risk of seeing something that somehow taints your future work. A software patent is the main worrying thing, except their MVP probably didn't implement anything (knowingly) patented.
posted by joeyh at 3:30 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
When people talk about "smaller streamers", are they still talking about people who make seven figures? I mean, I know I'm way on the wrong end of the curve as to how much I make in my shitty job, but...?
posted by maxwelton at 3:31 PM on October 6, 2021
posted by maxwelton at 3:31 PM on October 6, 2021
Jesus I’m 52 and when I read that someone “pwned” someone it’s like they said they got jiggy with it. Is that still a thing?
If it isn't I want my five dollars back.
posted by pwnguin at 3:36 PM on October 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
If it isn't I want my five dollars back.
posted by pwnguin at 3:36 PM on October 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
Or is twitch the evil empire here? Clue me in.
I too am confused and uncertain as to where to direct my outrage or if I should have any; I'm having a hard time with how the stated motives of the hacker line up with the actions taken. I have no love for Amazon or Twitch, but right now I just feel like a rubbernecker.
posted by nubs at 3:43 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I too am confused and uncertain as to where to direct my outrage or if I should have any; I'm having a hard time with how the stated motives of the hacker line up with the actions taken. I have no love for Amazon or Twitch, but right now I just feel like a rubbernecker.
posted by nubs at 3:43 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
When people talk about "smaller streamers", are they still talking about people who make seven figures? I mean, I know I'm way on the wrong end of the curve as to how much I make in my shitty job, but...?
I've had a similar thought as well. I've seen folks on Twitter be like "Do not look up what people make from Twitch! It's private information!" but to me that sounds an awful lot like "Don't share salary information with your coworkers!" I get that some folks will end up being harassed for how much or little they make from Twitch but honestly a vast majority of the folks that stream and get harassed on Twitch already make nothing or less than they can live off of so I don't really understand this mindset.
Makes more sense for folks to share this information, find out what works and what doesn't, and use this information to bring Twitch to the bargaining table and ensure fairer payouts for the people actually doing the work of making what Twitch sells.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:53 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I've had a similar thought as well. I've seen folks on Twitter be like "Do not look up what people make from Twitch! It's private information!" but to me that sounds an awful lot like "Don't share salary information with your coworkers!" I get that some folks will end up being harassed for how much or little they make from Twitch but honestly a vast majority of the folks that stream and get harassed on Twitch already make nothing or less than they can live off of so I don't really understand this mindset.
Makes more sense for folks to share this information, find out what works and what doesn't, and use this information to bring Twitch to the bargaining table and ensure fairer payouts for the people actually doing the work of making what Twitch sells.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:53 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Honestly, my feeling is that major breaches are their own reward as far as hacker cred goes; cracking Twitch wide open and dumping a pile of info in public is the horse, rationales for it are the cart. Not to say the folks involved don't have their own politics or motivations, but you don't just idly do something like this because you're in a bad mood about something. I'd say don't get too married to a narrative explanation (righteous or conspiratorial) for things that tend famously to mostly be acts of audacity for their own sake.
posted by cortex at 3:59 PM on October 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by cortex at 3:59 PM on October 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
The other day in one of the Facebook threads I compared Twitch to church. The high earners are the megachurch pastors.
posted by clawsoon at 4:01 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 4:01 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Makes more sense for folks to share this information, find out what works and what doesn't, and use this information to bring Twitch to the bargaining table and ensure fairer payouts for the people actually doing the work of making what Twitch sells.
The leaked payout amounts only cover subs, bits, and ads. The rates for subs and bits are well-known: 1 sub = $5 USD - Twitch's cut (affiliates and small partners ~50%; big partners ~25%). 100 bits = $1 USD. I'm not familiar with ad rates, but I think the range is known. Far more useful would be the price of the exclusive contracts that some streamers sign, which can go into the millions, and any external sponsorship deals.
posted by airmail at 4:19 PM on October 6, 2021
The leaked payout amounts only cover subs, bits, and ads. The rates for subs and bits are well-known: 1 sub = $5 USD - Twitch's cut (affiliates and small partners ~50%; big partners ~25%). 100 bits = $1 USD. I'm not familiar with ad rates, but I think the range is known. Far more useful would be the price of the exclusive contracts that some streamers sign, which can go into the millions, and any external sponsorship deals.
posted by airmail at 4:19 PM on October 6, 2021
"Jeff Bezos paid $970 million for this, we’re giving it away FOR FREE."
Fuck you, guy.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:26 PM on October 6, 2021
Fuck you, guy.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:26 PM on October 6, 2021
When people talk about "smaller streamers", are they still talking about people who make seven figures?
I mean, Twitch supposedly has about 8 million active streamers per month, with maybe a hundred thousand active at any one time (source). And according to the leaked data, only the top 2,000 or so channels made more than $100k in the last two years.
There are definitely people getting rich from Twitch, but they're a tiny minority of the people affected by this hack. The vast majority of streamers earn little or nothing.
posted by teraflop at 4:39 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
I mean, Twitch supposedly has about 8 million active streamers per month, with maybe a hundred thousand active at any one time (source). And according to the leaked data, only the top 2,000 or so channels made more than $100k in the last two years.
There are definitely people getting rich from Twitch, but they're a tiny minority of the people affected by this hack. The vast majority of streamers earn little or nothing.
posted by teraflop at 4:39 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
There are definitely people getting rich from Twitch, but they're a tiny minority of the people affected by this hack. The vast majority of streamers earn little or nothing.
Waypoint just did a piece about some of these non-superstar streamers: The Gamers Who Regularly Stream to No One.
posted by rodlymight at 5:37 PM on October 6, 2021
Waypoint just did a piece about some of these non-superstar streamers: The Gamers Who Regularly Stream to No One.
posted by rodlymight at 5:37 PM on October 6, 2021
Honestly, I think I've used Twitch maybe ten times ever, and they were for SaltyBet, Chapo Trap House or Bilbo the Cat.
But I changed my passwords anyway.
posted by delfin at 5:43 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
But I changed my passwords anyway.
posted by delfin at 5:43 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
When people talk about "smaller streamers", are they still talking about people who make seven figures? I mean, I know I'm way on the wrong end of the curve as to how much I make in my shitty job, but...?
posted by maxwelton at 18:31 on October 6
The websites showing the top earners end in the 7 figures, the leak includes people earning far less than that. Streamers large and small were included in the leak.
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 5:52 PM on October 6, 2021
posted by maxwelton at 18:31 on October 6
The websites showing the top earners end in the 7 figures, the leak includes people earning far less than that. Streamers large and small were included in the leak.
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 5:52 PM on October 6, 2021
Or is twitch the evil empire here? Clue me in.
Twitch, as a inhuman corporation that values revenue over making sure people aren't systemically abused, sucks
this hack, which may contain personally identifying information that makes it easier to dox/swat/hate raid, or to hack into Twitch in order to accomplish the same, also sucks
the society in which we live, which values $$, sucks and is the root cause of all of this unnecessary human suffering
hope that clears things up
posted by paimapi at 6:04 PM on October 6, 2021 [15 favorites]
Twitch, as a inhuman corporation that values revenue over making sure people aren't systemically abused, sucks
this hack, which may contain personally identifying information that makes it easier to dox/swat/hate raid, or to hack into Twitch in order to accomplish the same, also sucks
the society in which we live, which values $$, sucks and is the root cause of all of this unnecessary human suffering
hope that clears things up
posted by paimapi at 6:04 PM on October 6, 2021 [15 favorites]
pwned...got jiggy with it...still a thing?
posted by freecellwizard
Checks out
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:03 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by freecellwizard
Checks out
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:03 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
The question whether a giant corporation is the good guy or the bad guy is confusing for me in 2021.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:48 AM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:48 AM on October 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
Kotaku counted up some statistics for the top 100 streamers. Only Three Percent Of Twitch’s Top-Earning Streamers Are Women, Apparently.
posted by Nelson at 8:31 AM on October 7, 2021
Many women who stream on Twitch are also marginalized on the basis of race and sexual orientation. Pokimane is the only woman of color who made the top earner list.More or less what folks here have been saying but it's nice to have a careful count.
posted by Nelson at 8:31 AM on October 7, 2021
Last night, Twitch released a statement:
posted by mhum at 11:19 AM on October 7, 2021
We have learned that some data was exposed to the internet due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party. Our teams are working with urgency to investigate the incident.I wonder what kind of server configuration screwup would expose both the source code (presumably stored in some kind of github type setup) and streamer payouts (presumably stored ... somwhere else?).
As the investigation is ongoing, we are still in the process of understanding the impact in detail. We understand that this situation raises concerns, and we want to address some of those here while our investigation continues.
At this time, we have no indication that login credentials have been exposed. We are continuing to investigate.
Additionally, full credit card numbers are not stored by Twitch, so full credit card numbers were not exposed.
posted by mhum at 11:19 AM on October 7, 2021
I assume it's the kind of confguration screwup that is essentially a lie
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:34 AM on October 7, 2021
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:34 AM on October 7, 2021
Or possibly they mean that some creds to internal systems were leaked.
But also, hey, maybe they do keep streamer payouts in github, who knows
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:35 AM on October 7, 2021
But also, hey, maybe they do keep streamer payouts in github, who knows
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:35 AM on October 7, 2021
It’s a SaaS that has been in hyper growth mode and then been acquired by AWS, so likely has so many issues around tech debt that there were multiple problems waiting to happening. Leaked credentials, insecure application letting someone run code on the platform, backups and copies of database stuck in random places for debugging, troubleshooting, performance testing, etc.
I’m really curious as to how they got their hands on the Red Team’s tools (which is supposed to be the internal “attackers” meant to be trying to break in all the time to test security), which is showing either how much of a joke security was, or how sophisticated the hack was. Or someone making some shitty late night IAM policies and forgetting to clean them up afterwards (or leaving a few EC2 instances up and running with their tools on them in a more vulnerable location than they thought, which someone else then repurposed).
posted by mrzarquon at 1:52 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
I’m really curious as to how they got their hands on the Red Team’s tools (which is supposed to be the internal “attackers” meant to be trying to break in all the time to test security), which is showing either how much of a joke security was, or how sophisticated the hack was. Or someone making some shitty late night IAM policies and forgetting to clean them up afterwards (or leaving a few EC2 instances up and running with their tools on them in a more vulnerable location than they thought, which someone else then repurposed).
posted by mrzarquon at 1:52 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
The don’t keep the steamer payouts in a git repo. They kept the passwords to their payouts database in the source code of the reporting tools and the database connection info. So the hackers allegedly used that to pull down that data and probably a lot of other stuff.
posted by interogative mood at 3:13 PM on October 7, 2021
posted by interogative mood at 3:13 PM on October 7, 2021
the society in which we live, which values $$, sucks and is the root cause of all of this unnecessary human suffering
This is a weird rider to add, because it feels sort of like it’s giving Twitch and/or the hackers passes for their bad behavior because man, ain’t society terrible? Let’s leave society out of this particular boondoggle.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:41 PM on October 7, 2021
This is a weird rider to add, because it feels sort of like it’s giving Twitch and/or the hackers passes for their bad behavior because man, ain’t society terrible? Let’s leave society out of this particular boondoggle.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:41 PM on October 7, 2021
This isn't "Free as in speech", it isn't even "Free as in beer", this is "Free as in escaped tiger."Not my area of expertise but.... I would think it also basically makes it impossible to claim any kind of "clean room" implementation of anything that might be covered under patent.
posted by mce at 9:44 AM on October 13, 2021
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posted by Bee'sWing at 11:12 AM on October 6, 2021 [4 favorites]