Hackers disfigure Twitch with photos of Jeff Bezos, following massive data breach



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What just happened? After the massive Twitch leak earlier this week, hackers are now exploiting the platform’s front-end logic for their own amusement. It’s all said to be rising on the Amazon-owned platform due to its neglect on the security side, so it looks like it’s just the start.

Twitch has had a rough week, and it’s not quite over yet. This morning, hackers were able to degrade the platform for a few hours, apparently uninterrupted by more than their own laughter.

Users who jumped on the Amazon-owned service were greeted with close-up footage of Jeff Bezos while searching for GTA V, Dota 2, Apex Legends, Minecraft, Smite, Overwatch, Dead by Daylight, Final Fantasy XIV and several other games. Apparently, hackers have replaced a lot of background game images with the scariest photos of Amazon’s president and founder they could find.

At the time of writing, the most likely explanation for this is that some people who got their hands on a treasure trove of information and code about the inner workings of Twitch are now abusing the site’s features for fun. As with all of these leaks, it was only a matter of time before they were exploited, and that’s probably just the start.

It all started on Tuesday, when someone on 4Chan posted a torrent link to over 125 gigabytes of source code, API documentation, internal tools and unreleased projects, and more. This was supposed to stimulate competition in the video streaming space, but many people were drawn to the gross payout leaks for top performing Twitch streamers.

Twitch investigated the incident, but only confirmed that a “malicious third party” exploited an error in a server configuration change to perform the hack, and that sensitive information such as credit card information was not were not exhibited. However, several former employees told The Verge that the situation is much more complicated than the company is willing to admit.

A source claimed that Twitch had received several warnings regarding security and safety issues, but the company often ignored them as it worked to launch new features and grow the platform as quickly as possible.

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