Stack Overflow, the world’s largest developer community with more than 50 million users, has revealed that hackers have gained access to its internal network.

Mary Ferguson, VP of engineering at Stack Overflow, said: “Over the weekend, there was an attack on Stack Overflow. We have confirmed that some level of production access was gained on May 11.

“We discovered and investigated the extent of the access and are addressing all known vulnerabilities.We have not identified any breach of customer or user data. Our customers’ and users’ security is of the utmost importance to us. After we conclude our investigation cycle, we will provide more information.”

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Ferguson said the investigation had found no evidence that hackers had accessed user data, however the company had not ruled out such an event, she added.

She promised the company would provide more details once the investigation, currently ongoing, had concluded.

Founded in 2008, the site is considered to be the cornerstone of programmer community, and many ‘rookie’ developers use it to familiarise themselves with coding principles and practices.

Being such a key part of the community, one user took to Twitter to say: “I can bet the hacker used StackOverflow to help him code the hack!!”

It also produces one of the best regarded industry surveys believed to be one of the most accurate reports on the programming ecosystem.

Topics covered by the report include industry salaries, programming language prevalence, developer tools, and workplace conditions.

Last year, fellow Q&A site Quora admitted to a data breach incident, in which hackers gained access to the account info, passwords, emails, and votes of more than 100m users.