By Andy Yu, Eric Chang, Young Tsai, and Lina Wu
It started on 4chan with a suspicious torrent link in early October, then it quickly spread among every relevant social media. The original poster claimed that this massive file is all the source code of Twitch and its internal documents. At first, people are doubtful. The torrent link was quickly taken down, but it was still available in many corners of the Internet. Even though the sheer number of files pretty much drove the casual observer away, the content proved useful to many creators. Soon, news outlets caught on to the story. Indeed, the code works and there are documents related to streamers and unannounced projects from Twitch. A few days later, Twitch issued a statement confirming the authenticity of the leak but assured that no sensitive user data was stolen.
The source code allows developers to perfectly replicate the platform. However, without the proper infrastructure Amazon provided and Twitch maintained throughout the years, a perfect Twitch clone is not feasible. Still, these are some nice references for people interested in platform development.
Although the code has no practical use to most of the Internet, some would not let this opportunity of exploitation go. Just a few days after Twitch confirmed the leak, the said platform was hacked and Jeff Bezos’s face was plastered all around the website. The pictures stayed for about two hours before Twitch was able to remove them. Whether this indicates a more serious security concern remains to be seen.
One of the most talked-about pieces might be the payout data for the top streamers of the platform. It makes for good boasting materials for some streamers, as well as a (partial) insight on how wealthy these streamers can be. One thing to note is that these payout data did not include many other income sources; therefore, the real salary of the top streamers might be higher than the numbers shown.
Besides some small talk material, the leaked payout documents do reveal some more insidious data. As explained by e-sport personal Jake Lucky on Twitter, a streamer money laundering scandal just blew up in Turkey via the exposed payout data.
"The idea is that the scammers use stolen credit cards to donate bits to streamers, who then give part of it back to the scammers, and keep the rest for themselves. Many of whom are likely aware that this is dirty money,” Esport Reporter Jake Lucky said on his Twitter post.
A few Valorant streamers/professional players received bits of donations from stolen credit cards. The streamers then gave back some money to the fraudsters. The players had admitted to the accusation, and the case had even reached the Turkish parliament. Ironically, besides the representative E-sport organization terminating the players’ contract, both Riot Turkey and Twitch had yet to issue punishment for the said players.
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