Twitch hack: is our data in danger?

Twitch has been the subject of a huge hacker attack over the past few hours, which exposed numerous sensitive user data, streamer earnings, and even the site’s source code. The user who perpetrated the cyber attack posted the stolen goods in the form of a link torrent da 125 GB su 4Chan, motivating its action as an incentive to competition in the online video sector.

Twitch hack: what happened?

The files shared by the hacker are currently downloadable, and contain very accurate data regarding the sensitive information of both users and content creators active on the purple Amazon site. This is undoubtedly a well-aimed blow to the e-commerce giant, which also comes in conjunction with the market launch of New World, the MMORPG developed by Bezos’ own company.

Timing is anything but random, given that the user who perpetrated this cyber crime stated that he did so to actively fight the monopoly in which Twitch would operate in the video sharing site industry, also criticizing the streaming site community, described as “a disgusting toxic cesspool”.

It is, in spite of ourselves, impressive to note, like the source code stolen dates back to the beginnings of the Twitch brand, complete with comments from the developers and notes on how to make the platform work better. One of the stolen elements that has caused the most discussion, however, is related to the earnings of the top streamers, also leaked along with the rest of the sensitive data.

These latest measurements are for 2019 and are accompanied by an overview of the Twitch mobile, desktop and console clients, proprietary SDKs and AWS internal services used by Twitch. Obviously we are facing very high figures, as you would expect from the professionals on this platform, but we will not report the exact numbers out of respect for these content creators.

The mention of this project is particularly interesting Vapor, which should be Amazon’s answer to the Steam phenomenon, even if there are no precise details to this line.

Is the data authentic?

In the past few hours she also intervened an anonymous source inside Twitch, which confirmed the authenticity of the data stolen through the hacker attack. Both the source code and the published data would therefore be considered accurate in all respects, although the doubt continues to remain a constant even as we write these lines.

Officially, in fact, the streaming site has not yet published any confirmation to this effect, even if according to the same anonymous source. the platform would be well aware of the data leak for days, to the point of having even identified a probable date, namely Monday. It remains unclear in this scenario whether or not user accounts are in danger.

“At the moment, we have no indication that the login credentials of the accounts have been exposed, we are continuing to investigate – admitted Twitch, who also explained that the origin of the breach was – An error in a change of server configuration that has been exploited for access by a hostile third party entity “.

The advice, as you have surely already imagined, is that of promptly change your password, by enabling two-factor authentication. To do this, simply log into Twitch with your account and select “Settings” then “Security and Privacy“. Here, below “Safety” will find “Cambia Password“: Clicking on it will open a panel that will ask you to enter the old password and then the new one.

To activate thetwo-step authentication, always in the “Security and Privacy” panel, just click on the function of the same name: at this point you will be asked to enter the telephone number and then to scan the QR Code with an app such as Google Authenticator.