A 4chan user has leaked 270GB of internal New York Times data — allegedly including source code for the popular Wordle game and other parts of the business — as part of an incident that the media outlet partially confirmed this week. The anonymous 4chan user claimed to have gained access to 5,000 GitHub repositories, mostly unencrypted, containing a collective 3.6 million files, including "basically all source code belonging to the New York Times Company." “The underlying event related to the recent online posting of Times information occurred in January 2024, when a credential to a cloud-based third-party code platform was inadvertently made available," says Charlie Stadtlander, New York Times managing director for external communications, newsroom, and opinion. "Additionally, the claim that only a small fraction of the repositories were encrypted highlights a potential gap in data protection strategies." The NYTimes should do a thorough review of all their source code to make sure it was not tampered with or that unauthorized changes were made."

Source: New York Times June 11, 2024 01:38 UTC