New York Times code stolen and leaked on 4Chan — Wordle apparently included

The controversial image board 4Chan is back in the news this week after two big data dumps were posted on the site.

Mashable previously covered the Disney hack allegedly perpetrated by Club Penguin fans looking to retaliate against the company.

Now, it appears the New York Times Company is the latest establishment to have its data leaked on 4Chan over the past week. The data allegedly includes source code to its viral Wordle game.

What data was stolen from the New York Times?

X user @vxunderground appeared to be the first to notice that 270GB of internal data connected to the New York Times was posted online. The data contains the company’s internal source code and consists of more than 5,000+ source code repositories. The leak is made up of a total of roughly 3,600,000 files.

Tweet may have been deleted

According to a text file shared by the hacker, 6,223 folders were stolen from the New York Times‘ GitHub repository. This includes internal company IT documents and source code, which includes the popular word game that the Times acquired in 2022, Wordle.

In a statement provided to BleepingComputer, the New York Times confirmed that the company’s GitHub account was breached in January 2024.

The Times says that a credential for its GitHub account was “inadvertently made available” and the company took measures to rectify the issue at the time. The New York Times also said that its own systems were not accessed in the breach and that the event did not impact the company’s operations.

It is unclear if there is any connection between the New York Times breach and the Disney leak.