'New York Times source code' leaks online via 4chan
A 4chan user claims to have leaked 270GB of internal New York Times data, including source code, via the notorious image board.
According to the unnamed netizen, the information includes "basically all source code belonging to The New York Time Company," amounting to roughly 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files now available for download from peer-to-peer networks. Details on how to get the files were shared by the poster on 4chan.
While The Register has seen what's said to be a list of files in the purported leak, we have not yet verified the legitimacy of the leak, and the newspaper did not respond to inquiries about the case.
Of the code listed - whose filenames indicate everything from the blueprints to Wordle to email marketing campaigns and ad reports - "less than 30" are "encrypted," the 4channer claimed. Again, take this with a healthy dose of salt considering the source — an unnamed 4chan user.
The Register will update this story if and when we receive a response from The Times. But if true, the theft could potentially cause a huge headache for the newspaper, given the list of stolen data. There's a lot of JavaScript and TypeScript in there, judging by the filenames, plus some personal information. It might be largely scraped from the public site, it might actually be stolen.
