Twitch confirms data breach after server configuration error

The Twitch logo on a smartphone being held by a shadowy hand

Video streaming service Twitch has confirmed it was hacked on Wednesday, after a trove of sensitive information was leaked online.

An anonymous hacker released information about content creator payments and what appears to be the source code for the platform, with around 125 GB of data thought to have been taken.

The hacker has also claimed they will reveal more information about an unreleased project, codenamed Vapor, being developed by Amazon Game Studios, which is rumoured to be a direct competitor to popular PC gaming platform Steam.

Exactly how the hacker gained access is unclear, with the Amazon-owned company offering very little detail as yet, though it said it is still investigating the incident.

"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," the company confirmed in a statement on Thursday. "Our teams are working with urgency to investigate the incident."

Twitch added that there's no indication that login credentials have been exposed, and that full credit card numbers are not stored on company servers.

The breach was first spotted on the anonymous messaging board 4chan, where the hacker posted details of what they claimed to have taken. The motive for the attack appears to be a hatred of Twitch and its users.

"Their community is also a disgusting toxic cesspool, so to foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space, we have completely pawned them, and in part one, are releasing the source code from almost 6,000 internal Git repositories," the hacker posted, according to a screenshot.

See more

According to further posts on 4chan, the hack included the breach and exposure of all creator payouts from 2019, mobile desktop and console clients, proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch, and internal 'red team' tools. However, this has not been confirmed by either Twitch or its parent company.

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office said it had not been notified of any data breach by Twitch or Amazon.

Bobby Hellard

Bobby Hellard is ITPro's Reviews Editor and has worked on CloudPro and ChannelPro since 2018. In his time at ITPro, Bobby has covered stories for all the major technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, and regularly attends industry-leading events such as AWS Re:Invent and Google Cloud Next.

Bobby mainly covers hardware reviews, but you will also recognise him as the face of many of our video reviews of laptops and smartphones.