Twitter obtains subpoena forcing GitHub to unmask source-code leaker | Hacker News Reader

Twitter obtains subpoena forcing GitHub to unmask source-code leaker

arstechnica.com

37 pointsmfiguiere13 comments

People wonder why laid off employees lose access to systems immediately.

This is why.

They get paid to do nothing for 3 months, plus they cashed out their stock benefits at a great price per share. Least they could do is not leak source code.

Still, best not to give them the chance to do anything wrong. Emotions get high during any layoff, especially a politically charged one.

Hope the leaker used good opsec and that this goes nowhere.

Considering how aggressive GitHub is with marking new accounts as spam, it's unlikely they signed up with a VPN or Tor. My money is on them being identified.

> My money is on them being identified.

I would have guessed that their best shot at identifying the leaker would have been through their internal security team. Hoping that a technically competent individual will be uncovered by GitHub feels like a last ditch attempt by a company that doesn't appear to have internal control over their own IP.

> Considering how aggressive GitHub is with marking new accounts as spam, it's unlikely they signed up with a VPN or Tor.

Unless something is changed, you certainly can. I signed up with a Protonmail email over a VPN with no issues (though it's been some years.)

They cracked down on anonymous accounts after they launched Actions and every spammer in the world tried to run crypto miners on them.

I've tried signing up via Tor in the past, and my account was automatically flagged with no ability to create public repositories.

A freshly-imaged machine on public wifi should be more than enough to hide their identity. No reason they have to use Tor.

Next we'll hear about Musk buying a coffeeshop in downtown SF to get access to their security cameras

DMCA claims can go up the chain. For example, they could get the email address from GitHub, then subpoena the email provider for info to unmask the person (for example, any phone number used when signing up or logging in to the email account). Then, they could subpoena the phone company to identify the perpetrator.

Just irrational Musk hate or is there any reason we want people to freely be able to share all code and open up for leaks involving everyone using a site or software?

Musk has nothing to do with it. There's this whole movement full of people that want to have the code for everything they run. It's called Open Source. Of course, there's the matter of consent, and someone's private code being shared is not what the movement is about, but yes, some people want people to able to freely share all code.

It might also shock you to find out that there are even groups out there that want everything for free! They can be found at places like the pirate bay, or libgen.

Someone sat in a cafe or sitting in their care close to a cafe created the account using a clean USB booted laptop, and again used another public wifi while sitting in their car to push the source code. Unless they have serious verification mechanism and fraud prevention a more techy user can possibly avoid being traced.

Good step towards exposing someone that should never have access to any company's proprietary source code. They could be out looking for a job ready to do this again.

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