Truth Social: Licensing and hacking problems at Trump’s network

Donald Trump’s social network Truth Social is already facing its first serious problems long before its launch: In addition to hacking attacks, a license violation is in the offing.

Attacks on test version

Shortly after the announcement of the new social network, several people managed to break into two different test versions of Truth Social. The test environments were probably publicly accessible and not sufficiently secured, so that it was possible, for example, to register accounts under various names of celebrities – including the account @donaldjtrump. As a result, the network was flooded with images and comments that clearly expressed the attackers’ disfavor.

In the meantime, there are growing indications that the Anonymous collective is behind the attack. This suggests that it was a planned action. This is also indicated by a commentary in the New York Times, which calls the action an “online war on hate.”

License violation obvious

There is also an obvious license violation. The new social network is technically based on the open source software Mastodon. Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko confirmed corresponding assumptions and pointed out that error messages in Truth Social still showed the original Mastodon design and that clear references to Mastodon could also be found in the site’s source code. This is not problematic for the time being, as the software can be used freely. However, Trump’s Truth Social violates the license conditions: The license under which Mastodon can be used requires that users also make their code freely available. This has not yet happened with Truth Social. Instead, the code is described as proprietary.