There was a major data breach covering the years 2012-2015 regarding Apple’s TestFlight service, where games on the App Store are tested. This breach, known as “Teraleak,” allowed unauthorized access to tens of thousands of iOS apps and games, resulting in the exposure of large amounts of data.
Never-released Angry Birds games and many App Store apps leaked
The term “Teraleak” comes not only from the sheer size of the leaked data, but also from Nintendo in 2020, which brought to light prototypes of iconic games like Star Fox 2 and Yoshi’s Island, as well as stripped-down content from classics like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. It was used as a reference to “gigaleak”.
TestFlight, the service at the center of the App Store data leak, serves as a platform for developers to publish iOS apps to test them before their official release. Data captured from Apple’s servers between 2012 and 2015 were extracted and made publicly available. This data was shared on social media platform X after being archived anonymously via the Wayback Machine.
The leaked files include prototypes and beta versions of various applications and games published through TestFlight. The leak includes several unreleased Angry Birds games. It’s thought that as people dig into the data, more unreleased game prototypes will emerge.
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Beyond the potential discovery of unreleased games, users can also find apps that have been removed from the App Store and are no longer available for download through Apple’s distribution platform. This leak could be useful in preserving and archiving mobile gaming history.
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