An internet leak is the unauthorized release of information over the internet. Various types of information and data can be, and have been, "leaked" to the Internet, the most common being personal information, computer software and source code, and artistic works such as books or albums. For example, a musical album is leaked if it has been made available to the public on the Internet before its official release date.
Internet leak also known as data leak occurs when sensitive or confidential information is exposed, either accidentally or intentionally and can have serious consequences for individuals or organizations involved. The terms data leak and data breach are related but distinct. A data leak typically happens intentionally, often when an internal source exposes information to an external party. In contrast, a data breach is usually deliberate, occurring when an external party gains unauthorized access to a network or system, which can lead to data leak.
Music leak
Source code leaks Source code leaks are usually caused by misconfiguration of software like CVS or FTP which allow people to get source files through exploits, software bugs, or employees that have access to the sources or part of them revealing the code in order to harm the company.
There were many cases of source code leaks in the history of software development. Developers may inadvertently leak source code by making mistakes when mastering. Two releases of Space Quest II contained parts of the source code to Sierra's AGI game engine, and a particular release of Double Dragon II for the PC contained a deleted archive of the game source code.DragonII on archive.org As Fraunhofer IIS only released a low quality version of their MP3 encoding software (l3enc) in 1994, a hacker named SoloH gathered the source code from the unprotected servers of the University of Erlangen and developed a higher quality version, which started the MP3 revolution on the internet.The heavenly jukebox on The Atlantic "To show industries how to use the codec, MPEG cobbled together a free sample program that converted music into MP3 files. The demonstration software created poor-quality sound, and Fraunhofer did not intend that it be used. The software's "source code"—its underlying instructions—was stored on an easily accessible computer at the University of Erlangen, from which it was downloaded by one SoloH, a hacker in the Netherlands (and, one assumes, a Star Wars fan). SoloH revamped the source code to produce software that converted compact-disc tracks into music files of acceptable quality." (2000)Technologies of Piracy? - Exploring the Interplay Between Commercialism and Idealism in the Development of MP3 and DivX by HENDRIK STORSTEIN SPILKER, SVEIN HÖIER, page 2072, International Journal of Communication 7 (2013) Around 1996 Electronic Arts accidentally put the source code of the video game FIFA 97 on the demo disc.When EA Sports Accidentally Put a Game's Source Code on a Demo Disc by Luke Plunkett on kotaku.com (May 2, 2012) In 2003, Axel Gembe, a German hacker, who had infiltrated Valve's internal network months earlier, exploited a security hole in Microsoft's Outlook to get the complete source of the video game Half-Life 2. The source code was leaked online a week later, a playable version of Half-Life 2 was compiled from the source code, revealing how unfinished it was. The leaks damaged morale at Valve and slowed development. In March 2004, Gembe contacted Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve, and identified himself, saying he was a fan and had not acted maliciously. Newell worked with the FBI to invite Gembe to a fake job interview, planning to have him arrested in the USA; however, police arrested him in Germany as they had already detected his actions. The complete source was soon available in various file sharing networks. Also in 2003, source code to Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines was leaked. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University published a critique of Diebold's products, based on an analysis of the software. They found, for example, that it would be easy to program a counterfeit voting card to work with the machines and then use it to cast multiple votes inside the voting booth. In 2003 a Chinese hacker acquired the source code for Lineage II and sold it to someone in California who then used it to create a bootleg version of the game, powered by his own servers. Despite warnings from NCSoft that pirating an online game was considered illegal, he continued doing so for a few years, until the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally raided his home in 2007, seized the servers and permanently disabled the website that fronted his bootleg version of Lineage II.fbi-shuts-down-lineage-ii-private-server on mmorpg.com (2007)CRACKING THE CODE Online IP Theft Is Not a Game on FBI.gov (02/01/2007) In 2003, one year after 3dfx was bought by Nvidia and support ended, the source code for their drivers leaked,Treiber-Quellcode von 3dfx im Netz aufgetaucht - Von Nvidia offenbar geduldet by Christian Klaß on Golem.de (May 7, 2003, in German) resulting in fan-made, updated drivers.NuAngel.net Drivers on nuangel.net In 2004, a large portion of the Windows NT 4.0's source code and a small percentage (reportedly about 15%) of Windows 2000 (formerly Windows NT)'s were leaked online.Windows Code May Be Stolen on PC World by Joris Evers (February 2004) The Windows 2000 (NT) source code leak was analysed by a writer for (now defunct) website Kuro5hin who noted that while the code was generally well written, it allegedly contained about "a dozen" instances of profanity and the milder euphemism "crap". The writer also noted that there were a lot of code hacks, with the "uglier" ones mostly being for compatibility with older programs and some hardware. It was feared that because of the leak, the number of security exploits would increase due to wider scrutiny of the source code. It was later discovered that the source of the leak originated from Mainsoft. Also in 2004, partial (800 MB) proprietary source code that drives Cisco Systems' networking hardware was made available in the internet. The site posted two files of source code written in the C programming language, which apparently enables some next-generation IPv6 functionality. News of the latest source code leak appeared on a Russian security site. In 2006, Anonymous hackers stole source code (about 1 GiB) for Symantec's pcAnywhere from the company's network. While confirmed in January 2012, it is still unclear how the hackers accessed the network. In late 2007, the source code of Norton Ghost 12 and a Norton Anti-Spyware version were available via BitTorrent. In December 2007 and January 8, a Pirate Bay user published the sources of five Idera SQL products via BitTorrent. In January 2011 the "stolen source code" of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2008 was published on the Pirate Bay. On May 20, 2011, EVE Online'''s source code was published by someone on a GitHub repository. After being online for four days, CCP Games issued a DMCA take-down request which was followed by GitHub.dmca/2011-05-24-cpp-virtual-world-operations.markdown on GitHub In 2011, the source code of GunZ: The Duel v1.5 became available online.Gunz 1.5 Source Code released. on ragezone.com (November 20, 2011) In December 2011, the source code of the Solaris 11 operating system's kernel was leaked via BitTorrent.Oracle Solaris 11 Kernel Source-Code Leaked on Phoronix by Michael Larabel (on December 19, 2011) In August 2014 S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky's X-Ray Engine source code (and its successor) became available on GitHub under a non-open-source license.xray on github.com (August 2014)xray-16 on github.com On December 29, 2015, the AmigaOS 3.1 source code leaked to the web, confirmed by the rights holder Hyperion Entertainment.amiga-os-kickstart-and-workbench-source-coded-leaked on December 29, 2015 On February 11, 2016, the source code of Opera's Presto Browser engine was leaked to GitHub. It remained unnoticed until January 12, 2017, and was taken down two days later in response to a DMCA request. Opera Software has confirmed the authenticity of the source code. In June 2017 a small part of Microsoft's Windows 10 source code leaked to the public. The leak was of the Shared Source Kit, a small portion of the source code given to OEMs to help with writing drivers.Windows 10 source code leak is an embarrassment for Microsoft - It's less serious than initially thought but still important, given security is high on everyone's mind. by Swapna Krishna on engadget.com (June 24, 2017) In February 2018, the iBoot bootloader for Apple operating systems' source code was leaked onto GitHub by an Apple engineer. The code was from 2016, and by the time it was leaked, iBoot had been restructured, making it obsolete. On April 22, 2020, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 code was leaked. Some time during March 2018, Nintendo suffered a significant leak when a hacker obtained an alleged 2 TB of confidential material containing source codes to game consoles, games, and internal documentation. Starting in 2018, the contents of this breach slowly made their way onto the Internet, starting with iQue Player ROMs and various Pokémon games. Later in 2020, the leaks gained more attention and grew in size, culminating into the release of Wii and Nintendo 64 source code, and the so-called "Gigaleak", a massive release containing multiple N64 games' source code and SNES Prototypes. On August 7, 2020, 20 GB of Intellectual property of Intel, including source code (in SystemVerilog and otherwise) of their system on chips leaked (with preserving git structure). That included Intel ME, Intel Microcode and software simulators of their hardware. Their various BIOS source code was also leaked. The SpaceX cameras firmware that Intel worked on also leaked. The data is being distributed through a torrent. On September 23, 2020, Windows XP SP1 and Windows Server 2003 complete source code depots were leaked. The archives included all the source code from the time it was used at Microsoft, including documentation and build tools. The leak was first dismissed as illegitimate, but it was soon clear that it was legitimate, the source code contained Windows XP specific code and resources, later one user managed to compile the OS and pack it into an ISO image. On January 4, 2021, Nissan North America source code was leaked online due to misconfiguration of a company Git server, which was left exposed online with a default username and password of admin/admin. Software engineer maia arson crimew learned of the leak and analyzed the data, which they shared with ZDNet. The repository reportedly contained Nissan NA mobile apps, parts of the Nissan ASIST diagnostics tool, Nissan's internal core mobile library, Dealer Business Systems and Dealer Portal, client acquisition and retention tools, market research tools and data, vehicle logistics portal, vehicle connected services, and various other back ends and internal tools, they reported. On February 10, 2021, Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) announced hackers had targeted the company and attempted to hold it to ransom. On 6 June 2021, someone in possession of the data had leaked all of Cyberpunk 2077 code (96.02 GB of data in 7z archive) online publicly, while previously it was only available in encrypted form. On October 6, 2021, streaming site Twitch had its source code along with earnings reports of top streamers leaked by hackers on 4chan, citing the streaming site's negative community and desire for competition and disruption of the online video streaming space. The breach was confirmed by Twitch on X. The leak was distributed freely via a torrent file and was 135.17 GB in size. As a precaution, all the stream keys have been reset by Twitch.