Twitch confirms data breach but remains silent on scope

Earlier today, we heard a rather shocking report which claimed that Twitch may have suffered a massive data breach. The report even went so far as to claim that the "entirety" of Twitch had been leaked, and indeed, the supposed hacker behind that breach published a 125GB torrent filled with information including Twitch's source code and the payout details for the platform's top streamers. Now, Twitch has confirmed that it did indeed suffer a breach but has stopped short of confirming the extent.

In a tweet published after that report went live, Twitch confirmed that it did suffer a security breach. "We can confirm a breach has taken place," Twitch said in the week. "Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us."

We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us.

— Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021

That tweet, obviously, doesn't tell us a whole lot, but the report from VGC earlier today suggested that there was plenty of information included in the leak. Not only did the leak supposedly contain source codes both old and new for Twitch itself, but it also contained payout data dating back to 2019 for many of Twitch's largest streamers, giving us a window into just how much the most popular creators on the platform have made.

Beyond that, VGC also reported that the leak included data such as the various Twitch clients (desktop, mobile, and console) along with "proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch." While it's going to take time for people to look through all 125GB of that torrent, it's probably not a bad idea for users to assume that passwords, stream keys, and email addresses were linked and change them.

The hacker behind this leak claims that even more content is on the way, so this is apparently just the first part. As this is a developing story, we'll let you know when Twitch officially confirms new details about the breach – and if more information is leaked in the future.