(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s live streaming e-sports platform Twitch on Wednesday blamed “an error” in server configuration change for a data breach and said it was still assessing the impact.
An anonymous hacker claimed to have leaked Twitch data, including information related to the company’s source code, clients and unreleased games, according to Video Games Chronicle, which first reported the news.
Facebook Inc also blamed a “faulty configuration change” due to an error during routine maintenance on its network of data centers for the nearly six-hour outage earlier in the week that prevented the company’s 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services.
The social media giant said the error was not due to any malicious activity.
Twitch said there was no indication login credentials of users have been exposed. The company added it does not store full credit card details.
The Twitch hacker’s motive was to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space”, according to the Video Games Chronicle report https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-entirety-of-twitch-has-reportedly-been-leaked.
About 125GB of data was leaked, including information on Twitch’s highest paid video game streamers since 2019, such as a $9.6 million payout to the voice actors of popular game “Dungeons & Dragons” and $8.4 million to Canadian streamer xQcOW, the report said.
“Twitch leak is real. Includes significant amount of personal data,” cyber security expert Kevin Beaumont tweeted https://twitter.com/gossithedog/status/1445707816426115075?s=21.
Twitch, with over 30 million average daily visitors, has become increasingly popular with musicians and video gamers where they interact with users while live streaming content.
The platform, which was boycotted earlier this year by users for not doing enough to block harassment, previously made a move to ban users https://reut.rs/3mnORZW for offenses such as hate-group membership and credible threats of mass violence.
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Shounak Dasgupta and Krishna Chandra Eluri)