'Money laundering is taking place on Twitch,' revealed from a data leak incident



From the 'amount paid to the distributor' found in the Twitch data outflow incident that occurred in October 2021, it was found that money laundering using the system of the platform is actively carried out in Turkey. rice field. The case has caused a great deal of ripples in Turkey and has led to a motion by parliamentarians to submit a motion to parliament to investigate the case.

Turkey: Hackers allegedly used streaming platform Twitch to launder $ 10m | Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-twitch-money-laundering-fraud

Money-laundering on Twitch triggers call for investigation from Turkish politician | PC Gamer
https://www.pcgamer.com/twitch-money-laundering-scheme-triggers-call-for-investigation-from-turkish-politician/

On October 6, 2021, a torrent file was posted on Reddit, the largest social bulletin board in the English-speaking world, with access to 125GB of data allegedly stolen from Twitch by a hacker. This file contains the entire Twitch source code, including commit history, the proprietary SDK used by Twitch, information about internal AWS services, and unreleased Steam competitors developed by Amazon Game Studios. It contained so much data that experts described it as 'the biggest leak I've ever seen.'

Admitting that Twitch was hacked and leaked a large amount of data such as source code, payment information, personal information --GIGAZINE



Among the various data leaked, the one that attracted a lot of attention was 'information about money paid to creators after 2019'. This data is practically equivalent to 'the amount of money the distributor earned on Twitch', and the truth is also confirmed by multiple distributors. Turkey's Twitch users noted that they were different from users in other countries, with reports popping up from the analysis that 'the top 1% of distributors account for more than half of what Twitch pays.' That is money laundering.

From the payment information for the leaked distributor, even though there are only 40 to 50 viewers a day among Turkish Twitch distributors, they earn up to $ 1800 a day (about 205,000 yen). It turns out that there are also distributors. As a result of investigating this abnormal situation, it was found that money laundering using Twitch's in-platform currency 'Bits' is being performed.

A bit is a currency that viewers can send to distributors as 'support', and the distributor who receives it can earn $ 0.01 (about 1.14 yen) per bit. Bits can be purchased from 100 to 25,000 bits at a time, and the rate will change depending on the purchase amount, but if it is 25,000 bits that gives the distributor $ 250 (about 28,500 yen) It can be purchased for $ 308 (about 35,100 yen). In other words, 'about 80% of the amount paid can be converted into bits and exchanged.'

Some Turkish distributors have actually been offered a transaction that says, 'If you transfer the amount you earned with the gifted bit to the specified account, you will pay 20 to 30% as a commission.' matter. Below is a screenshot of the interaction when you were actually offered bit-based money laundering, and this person, S | nan, offers to pay a 20% commission to the poster.




This mysterious transaction is believed to be due to 'money laundering using credit card information stolen by cybercriminals.' In fact, as shown in the following poster, there are many cases where '10,000 Turkish lira (about 118,000 yen) was withdrawn without even consent'.




The amount laundered by such transactions is estimated at $ 9.8 million, with an estimated 2,400 distributors suspected of being involved. The incident has received a lot of attention in Turkey, and Jahrein , a well-known Turkish Twitch distributor with 1.7 million followers, said he provided the data in cooperation with the Cybercrime Countermeasures Office. In addition, an SNS campaign called '#dobettertwitch ' that asks Twitch for improvement has also broke out. And Gursel Tekin, the deputy representative of the Republican People's Party , the first opposition party, has submitted a motion requesting domestic organizations such as the Financial Crimes Investigation Commission to investigate this case.

A Twitch spokeswoman said he had taken steps against 150 Turkish distributors in the name of misusing monetization tools. 'We will continue to identify and remove distributors who appear to have committed acts that violate local law and Twitch's policies.'

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in Web Service,   Security, Posted by darkhorse_log