Top 10 Must Know Things about the Twitter Whistleblower This Week

Former Twitter security chief testified before US senators that the company's leadership put "earnings over security" and neglected to address critical flaws.

Pieter "Mudge" Zatko made a variety of allegations during his testimony before a US Senate judiciary committee on 13 September. He said that the corporation needs to change its security procedures to defend its customers and "democracy." Twitter hired Zatko in 2020 but sacked him earlier this year on the grounds of poor performance. He made devastating claims about the company's security policies and leadership in a disclosure sent to the US Congress and US federal agencies in July, and he was later asked to testify before lawmakers. At the US Senate hearing, Zatko stated, "I'm here today because Twitter leadership is misrepresenting the public, lawmakers, regulators, and even its own board of directors."

Here are the top things regarding the Twitter Whistleblower this week:

• Prioritizing profits over security

When Zatko joined Twitter, he allegedly discovered that the firm was "more than a decade behind industry security standards," but that executives were more concerned with revenue. "This is a significant deal for all of us," Zatko added, "when a powerful media platform can be penetrated by kids, criminals, and spies, and the firm continuously causes security issues on its own. "He noted that despite Twitter being prohibited in China, employees of the platform were concerned about organizations that "may or may not be" connected to the Chinese government running advertisements on the site. The sales executive allegedly told the whistleblower that the company would not stop running this advertisement because "we're making too much money from these sales."

• Foreign agents

Zatko expressed concern about foreign agents working for Twitter and being paid by the firm. He claimed to have learned that "at least one operative" from a Chinese intelligence agency was employed by Twitter. He also has "high confidence" that a different Twitter employee was an Indian spy. According to Zatko, the Twitter executives he spoke with didn't seem concerned about the possibility of having foreign agents working for the business. Additionally, he claimed that the business "just lacked the necessary skills to track down and remove foreign intelligence agents." He explained that having agents inside the organization may be very beneficial for a foreign intelligence agency. He asserted that if an agency wasn't using Twitter to promote its agents, "you're probably not doing your job.

• Inappropriate user data access

In addition to the possibility of having foreign agents working for the corporation, Twitter, according to Zatko, does not keep track of user activities. Nobody was aware of the thousands of unsuccessful efforts to access internal systems, he claimed. The fact that Twitter workers have access to "too much data" is one of the primary security flaws cited by Zatko in his assertions. He stated before the hearing that "it's not implausible to imply that an employee inside the corporation could take over the accounts of all the senators in this room."

• Unafraid of penalties

The corporation does not fear certain US regulators, such as the Federal Trade Commission, according to the Twitter whistleblower. He stated that due to the potential for issuing more than a single fine, the corporation has greater concerns about certain data protection authorities outside of the US, such as France's CNIL. One-time fines were "priced into" Twitter's operations and "didn't impact Twitter at all. Zatko added that when it came to regulator ratings and inspections, the business was "free to mark its own homework."

• Data gathering

In addition to gathering personal data about its users and workers, Zatko charged, Twitter is also unable to erase data from its systems because "they do not know where it is." The fact that the data of 50 million Twitter employees had been exposed, according to an internal incident investigation from 2020, confused him because the company does not have that many people. Because they haven't destroyed that data, Twitter still possesses all of the information pertaining to all previous employees, subcontractors, and users, according to Zatko.

• Not a "smoking gun" for Musk

The US hearing takes place as Twitter and Elon Musk are engaged in a legal spat. The CEO of Tesla is attempting to renege on a $44 billion acquisition, alleging he wasn't given enough details on phoney accounts on the site. Zatko has been summoned by Musk's legal team, and experts have said that the charges made by the former security chief may be a "smoking gun" in Musk's defense.