DMCA Takedowns of Bitcoin Software

Hey everyone, did you see the leak of the Claude Code source that happened about a week ago? It was uploaded to Github and Anthropic went on a rampage sending DMCA takedown notices for the repos. Then, some dude managed to use AI and a ton of tokens to rewrite the code in Rust in just a few hours, totally dodging the DMCA. That fork is still around today. Anyway, this got me thinking. If an exchange or DeFi platform ever mistakenly released their private source code, do you think there would be enough people willing to create a rewritten clone of it? We all know that kind of code could be super useful for gathering info. But could it also help us spot scams and phishing sites more easily since we would have a clearer idea of how the platform is supposed to function?

Well, a phishing site can just show a similar page, no need to copy or pretend functionality. So there it would not help; the original site needs be smart in order to make phishers' life harder. Scams? Just see the cloud mining sites that show pictures of actual hardware and show some random numbers for hash rate and income and people fall for that; exchanges with fake orders can probably also be made, but why, the effort looks big imho. Selective scams? Yes, those still happen and maybe there some knowledge would help to identify them fast. But also a public copy of an existing exchange would even make the scammers' life easier. Scrutiny? If I'd have my exchange and have my code public, I would internally use at very least a modified version of that, for my own business' security. Overall maybe I lack imagination, but I find somewhat debatable the usefulness for the average Joe of such code becoming public.

That may happen if the leaked code have more functionality or other benefit that isn't exist on current open-source exchange or DeFi code. But i expect big exchange/DeFi have complex infrastructure, where single leak isn't enough to replicate them. Scammer these days already can misuse AI to clone website/app appearance with less effort/time, and with convincing UI design. So i doubt source code leak would give significant benefit for the scammer.

From a security perspective, your post is quite strong and logical, and developers should work on it. It is necessary to consider this issue by analyzing the different stages of the security process, where a small change in the contract logic can change everything!

I don't know what the hack is going on with Claude Code, but micr0s0ft disabled a bunch of important github accounts and they can't be used anymore for wind0ws login I think Veracrypt and WireGuard was one of those accounts, but there are  more, and we already know github is owned by micr0s0ft crap. It would not surprise me if they started doing similar shenanigans with bitcoin related software...

I forget to say it earlier, but new bug and security vulnerability could be created during the rewrite. It's especially worse if AI is used, with little or no human verification. IMO it's reckless for exchange and DeFi. According to https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/09/microsoft_dev_account_deactivations/, Microsoft partly fixed the issue. But with initial poor treatment before news media report it, this won't be last time they "accidentally" lock account of some important developer.