Former Twitter security chief raises security concerns to US Congress

WASHINGTON — Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko told U.S. Congress on Tuesday that the platform ignored his security concerns as shareholders decided whether to approve. US$44 billion (S$60 billion) takeover deal Elon Musk is trying to get out.

Zatko, a former Twitter security chief and hacker popularly known as “Madge,” said at the hearing, “I’m here today because Twitter’s leadership has determined that the public, lawmakers, regulators and even the board of directors are Because you are misleading me.

While he was the platform’s security chief from late 2020 until his dismissal in January of this year, he tried to warn management to make it more vulnerable to hacking and data theft, but to no avail. rice field.

“They don’t know what data they have, where it is, or where it came from. So, of course, we can’t protect the data,” said Zatko, a judicial commissioner. said in his opening remarks at the meeting.

“In that case employees must have too much access (…) if there is no lock on the door, it doesn’t matter who has the key.”

Zatko testified that he provided concrete evidence of the problem to management and “repeatedly sounded the alarm.”

“Frankly, Twitter management ignored engineers because a significant part of management lacked the ability to understand the extent of the problem,” he said.

“But more importantly, executive incentives have shifted to prioritizing profit over security.”

Twitter dismissed 51-year-old Zatko’s allegations as baseless.

However His whistleblower report came to light in the US press in August Tesla CEO Elon Musk used it as part of his justification for dropping a unilateral bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion.

In his report, Zatko directly addressed Musk’s question about Twitter’s bot accounts, saying the company’s tools and team for finding such accounts are inadequate.

Musk cites bot accounts as one of his justifications for moving away from trading. Twitter is suing him to force completion of the acquisition. Trial set starting October 17th.

If the court focused on the fact that the world’s richest man refused to collect the facts normally associated with large corporate mergers, Zatko’s allegations could be unfounded.