Oliver Haslam on March 31, 2023, 5:19 pm

GitHub Must Out Twitter’s Source Code Leaker As Verified Organizations Goes Live

GitHub has been ordered to tell Twitter everything it knows about the account that leaked the social media services’s source code.

A US District Court for Northern California decision means that all information must be provided after the user FreeSpeechEnthusiast shared Twitter’s source code online.

In fact, as 9to5Mac notes, the source code had been available for months before Twitter realized. And while nobody has so far claimed responsibility, the smart money is on the leaker being one of the many people owner and CEO Elon Musk fired following his takeover of the company.

In a subpoena, the court says that GitHub has to make plenty of information available.

All identifying information, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), social media profile data, and IP address(es), for the user(s) associated with the following GitHub username: FreeSpeechEnthusiast. Please include all identifying information provided when this account was established, as well as all identifying information provided subsequently for billing or administrative purposes.

Further, the company must also share information on anyone who “posted, uploaded, downloaded or modified the data.”

This news also comes on the day when Twitter’s Verified Organizations program goes live. The program will effectively allow organizations to say who works for them to ensure that they are essentially verified.

Accounts affiliated with the organization will receive an affiliate badge on their profile with the organization’s logo, and will be featured on the organization’s Twitter profile, indicating their affiliation. All organizations are vetted before they can join Verified Organizations.

However, none of that will be free. Twitter is thought to be charging $1,000 for the gold checkmark that it will give to organizations, while each verified user will also cost $50 per month.