Meta notifies 1,500 after GitHub code theft

Meta is informing approximately 1,500 individuals following an attack that granted attackers access to its GitHub repositories. The breach, discovered several weeks ago, resulted in the theft of software code and personal information, predominantly belonging to U.S. employees. The assailants entered the repositories using credentials obtained from a stolen employee account.

Around 99% of the stolen material was identified as business data, primarily software code, while the remaining 1% comprised personal information, the majority of which consisted of synthetic or anonymized test data. Meta has not disclosed the specifics of the personal data involved or the number of repositories compromised. The company has stated that the attack did not involve a vulnerability in any of its products and that the stolen credentials were mistakenly stored in the repositories contrary to Meta's policy.

Following detection of the intrusion, Meta's security team terminated unauthorized access and contacted GitHub and law enforcement. The company is also notifying regulators and offering credit and dark web monitoring services to affected individuals. Meta has not yet identified the threat group, their motives, or how the employee's credentials were compromised.

The company has rotated secrets within the affected repositories and strengthened product security to prevent similar incidents. It is also implementing measures to scan for accidental uploads of personal data into code repositories.