Twitter’s source code is published online, forcing Elon Musk’s company to immediately file a lawsuit

Twitter’s source code was posted online in an embarrassing and potentially damaging security breach, forcing the social media company to take immediate legal action.

The company, owned by Elon Musk, filed a lawsuit Friday seeking a subpoena to force GitHub to reveal who posted parts of its code online.

GitHub has removed the code segments.

It was posted by someone using the name “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” – an apparent reference to Musk himself, who stated that he was a “free speech absolutist.”

Analysts believe the code could have been posted online by a disgruntled ex-employee.

The code was put online in January by ‘FreeSpeechEnthusiast’. Musk has taken legal action to find the person behind the account

Musk bought the company for $44 billion in October, and 75 percent of the company’s 7,500 employees have since been laid off or resigned.

News of the lawsuit and source code leak was reported by The New York Times on Sunday.

They said the code appears to have been live on GitHub since at least January.

It is unclear which parts were shared.

It came when Musk tweeted on March 17 that he wanted to make some of the source code — the part related to featured tweets — public.

“Twitter will open all code used to recommend tweets on March 31,” he said.

‘Our ‘algorithm’ is too complex and not fully understood internally. People will discover a lot of crazy things, but we will solve problems as soon as they are found!

“We are developing a simplified approach to present more engaging tweets, but it is still a work in progress. That will also be open source.

“Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to a rapid improvement in recommendation quality. Most importantly, we hope to gain your trust.’

Musk has admitted that the company is now worth less than half of the $44 billion he paid for it

The New York Times reported that Twitter executives were only recently made aware of the vulnerability.

Sources told the newspaper that the executives feared that the publicly available code would allow hackers to take the site offline or obtain information about those using it.

And the news came when Musk admitted in an email to staff that the company was struggling.

He said it was worth about $20 billion – less than half of what he paid for it.

He said “radical changes” at the company, including mass layoffs and cost cutting, were needed to avoid bankruptcy and streamline operations.

“Twitter is rapidly being reformed,” Musk wrote in the email accessed by The New York Times.

He added that the company could be considered “a reverse start-up” and that he believed Twitter could be worth $250 billion one day.

Musk has yet to tweet about the source leak.