Twitch downplays recent high-profile breach

Twitch
(Image credit: Ink Drop / Shutterstock)

In its latest update on the confirmed breach of its servers, popular video game live streaming service Twitch has shared that the attackers didn’t get their hands on the login credentials of users.

“Twitch passwords have not been exposed. We are also confident that systems that store Twitch login credentials, which are hashed with bcrypt, were not accessed, nor were full credit card numbers or ACH / bank information,” shared Twitch.

A couple of weeks back, an anonymous hacker claimed to have leaked the entirety of Twitch, including its source code and personally identifiable information (PII) of its users.

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Twitch confirmed the breach, and had been investigating the incident since, posting regular updates, with the latest once downplaying the impact of the breach.

Minimal customer impact

From its very first update confirming the breach, Twitch has maintained that the incident wouldn’t have exposed login credentials, even though it did acknowledge that “some data was exposed to the internet.”

In a follow up update Twitch said it had reset the streak keys of all users “out of an abundance of caution.”  

Twitch has blamed the breach on an error introduced during a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently capitalized by malicious users to gain unauthorized access to the server.

In the latest update, Twitch says it has fixed the issue that led to the breach, and have reviewed the incident thoroughly. 

“The exposed data primarily contained documents from Twitch’s source code repository, as well as a subset of creator payout data,” shares Twitch, adding that it’s confident that the breach has only affected a small fraction of users.

Mayank Sharma

With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’s TechRadar Pro’s expert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.