Anthropic Accidentally Took Down Thousands of GitHub Repos While Trying to Remove Its Leaked Source Code

Anthropic took down thousands of GitHub repositories in a scramble to remove copies of its leaked proprietary source code, but the DMCA takedowns swept up unrelated projects that had nothing to do with the leak.

The company said the mass removals were accidental. IBM's X-Force research shows that exposed source code is a primary attack path for compromising AI systems, as leaked internals can reveal architectural details and security boundaries that would otherwise remain opaque to adversaries. The public nature of the removal effort itself may have drawn more attention to the leak than a quieter response would have.

When an AI company's source code leaks online, does aggressively trying to remove it actually make the situation worse?