Amazon’s Twitch Was Hacked, Exposing Product Plans

On Wednesday, Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming e-sports platform, was hacked in a breach that included details on payments to content creators. Meanwhile, it also included an unreleased product from Amazon Game Studios. The firm accused an error in server configuration change that might have let a hacker leak sensitive data.

Twitch is still assessing the impact and has reset all stream keys or codes that enable influencers and streamers to connect and publish content for users.

Video Games Chronicle had earlier announced that a hacker had claimed to have leaked the live-streaming company’s data. It includes the source code and information on its users and unreleased games.

According to several sources, the anonymous hacker took more than 125 GB of data in the breach. The data also include Twitch’s source code and mention of Amazon Game Studio’s plans to launch an online store for computer games. Furthermore, the data also included details on Twitch’s highest-paid video game streamers since 2019, such as a $9.6 million payout to “Dungeons & Dragons” and $8.4 million to Canadian streamers xQcOW.

As far as we know, Amazon acquired Twitch for about $1 billion in 2014. The company is primarily focused on videos and live streams for video game fans. It has more than 30 million average daily visitors and has become increasingly popular.

Twitch Says There Was No Evidence of Any Exposure of User Login Credentials

Earlier, the social media giant Facebook accused a faulty configuration change during routine maintenance work at its data centers networks for the six-hour outage. It prevented its 3.5 billion users from accessing Facebook’s services.

Facebook later announced that the error wasn’t due to any malicious activity.

According to Candid Wuest, an executive for cyber protection research at Acronis, Facebook just removed itself from the Internet. However, they didn’t lose any sensitive data. Meanwhile, Wuest said that for Twitch, it was just bad fortune.

Wuest also added that a configuration change possibly allowed a third party to obtain Twitch’s data. Remarkably, a configuration change indicates a routine maintenance change of an IT infrastructure from turning a network drive on or off or giving it a new name.

Twitch announced there was no evidence of any exposure of user login credentials. The platform also reported that it doesn’t store full credit card details.

According to the Video Games Chronicle report, Twitch hackers fostered more disruption and rivalry in the online video streaming space.