SocraticGadfly: Twitter security sux donkey dongs

August 25, 2022

Twitter security sux donkey dongs

So alleges its brief cybersecurity chief, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, in a massive whistleblower filing with the feds, as reported by CNN. Hat tip to Schneier, where I found this.

REALLY sux. Zatko, hired in late 2020, says that in the weeks after Jan. 6, 2021, he was so worried about how many people had access to how much information about high-level accounts, he was worried about hackers hitting Twitter to claim all sorts of people supported #StartTheSteal. (That's its correct name, of course.)

Confirming what others have suspected, he adds that much of Twitter's server backbone is aged-out shit.

AND, he says that because of this and other things, there's no way Twitter's current ownership and top brass, re Elon Musk and his one plaint, can know for sure how bad or not Twitter's bot problem actually is. (CNN notes Musk has filed a subpoena.)

In his filing, Mudge also indicated that CEO Parag Agrawal was trying to shut him up, to put it bluntly, before canning him.

Given that Twitter's Saudi ties have recently been revealed, and Congresscritters are interested in all this, it spells big trouble for the blue birdie.

There's more juicy reveals about Agrawal, and a few about former head Jack Dorsey, including just how detached he had become before letting go.

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