Security News
People are trying to dig up dirt on Peiter Zatko, better known as Mudge. For the record, I have not been contacted. I’m not sure if I should feel slighted.
Twitter's former head of security Peiter "Mudge" Zatko on Tuesday told the US Senate Judiciary Committee that the social media company's lax data handling and inability to present problems to its board of directors threaten the privacy, security, and democracy for Americans. "Twitter's security failures threaten national security, compromise the privacy and security of users, and at times threaten the very continued existence of the Company," said Zatko in prepared remarks [PDF].
Elon Musk has come up with a new reason to get out of his acquisition of Twitter - a severance payment. In the latest attempt, Musk's lawyers said the merger agreement stated Twitter would not "Grant or provide any severance or termination payments or benefits to any Company Service Provider other than the payment of severance amounts or benefits in the ordinary course of business consistent with past practice."
When trying to click tweets on the Twitter web app, the only things that show up are the errors and a Retry button underneath, with no sidebar menu. Some users also have issues loading the Twitter website altogether, while others say that their not even able to connect to Twitter's servers, according to Downdetector.
Well known for an abundance of anti-western troll accounts and propaganda, Twitter and Meta are reporting that they've taken down nearly 200 accounts that, for the past five years, have been amplifying pro-Western messages in the Middle East and Central Asia. Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika, a social media analytics company, have published a report based on data from Meta and Twitter, in which they describe their findings as "The most extensive case of covert pro-Western on social media to be reviewed and analyzed by open-source researchers to date."
A recently surfaced 84-page whistleblower report filed with the US government by Twitter's former head of security Peiter "Mudge" Zatko last month blasts his former employer for its alleged shoddy security practices and being out of compliance with an FTC order to protect user data. Zatko, a respected white-hat hacker who served as Twitter's head of security for roughly 15 months between 2020 and 2022, accused Twitter of a litany of poor security and privacy practices that together constituted a national security risk.
Peiter Zatko, aka Mudge, has filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC against Twitter, claiming that they violated an eleven-year-old FTC settlement by having lousy security. He should know; he was Twitter's chief security officer until he was fired in January.
"Mr Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance," a Twitter spokesperson told The Register in an emailed statement. "What we've seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Mr. Zatko's allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be."
A former Twitter employee has been pronounced guilty for his role in digging up private information pertaining to certain Twitter users and turning over that data to Saudi Arabia. Ahmad Abouammo, 44, was convicted by a jury after a two-week trial in San Francisco federal court, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
Twitter accidentally exposed the personal information-including phone numbers and email addresses-for 5.4 million accounts. In January 2022, we received a report through our bug bounty program of a vulnerability in Twitter's systems.