Twitter whistleblower brings his critiques to Congress

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former security chief at Twitter told Congress on Tuesday that the social platform is plagued by weak cyber defenses, privacy threats and the inability to control millions of fake accounts. Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a respected cybersecurity expert, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to lay out his allegations.

“Twitter’s misleading the public, lawmakers” and regulators, Zatko said as he began his sworn testimony. The platform is “over a decade behind the industry’s best standard,” he said. “This is a big deal for all of us.” “It doesn’t matter who has keys if there are no locks,” Zatko said.

Zatko was the head of security for the influential platform until he was fired early this year. He filed a whistleblower complaint in July with Congress, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among his most serious accusations is that Twitter violated the terms of a 2011 FTC settlement by falsely claiming that it had put stronger measures in place to protect the security and privacy of its users.

Senators are clearly alarmed. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee, said Zatko has detailed flaws “that may pose a direct threat to Twitter’s hundreds of millions of users as well as to American democracy.” “Twitter is an immensely powerful platform and can’t afford gaping vulnerabilities,” he said.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-congress-838866addb81ca93473b1c0dd280c2f2?taid=632096c0488e6d00010116fa

[SheltieLover]

1. Kicking for visibility

[FakeNoose]

2. Didn't they already ban a bunch of fake accounts from Russia and Eastern Europe?

I mean, that happened right after Chump was banned, am I right?

One would hope that Twitter's security had a way to prevent those banned accounts from returning under different names/identities. If they don't and if they haven't, then this platform is toast.

[Lithos]

3. The weakness of his argument is that Zatko was head of Security for about 2 years

He has yet to fully explain exactly what he was doing in that two year time period.

I'm sure Twitter has a lot of bad security issues. Same with Facebook and almost every other major internet service. Bringing it in front of Congress is going to have zero effect except to give people a chance to bash technology companies yet again. And the last thing you would want is for Congress to enact a law which attempts to proscribe good security practices. What Congress should do though is to setup a certain expectation of privacy and transparency in the platform to what use is happening to people's data.

[Ford_Prefect]

4. Never tweeted and never will. Like Facebook the security holes are enormous and intentional

so the platform can sell advertising space and data to purveyors and politicians alike.

[Hekate]

6. Your statement is poorly constructed & thus open to misinterpretation, unfortunately...

Are you saying that Col Vindman was unfairly hounded for lacking corroborating documents?

Are you saying that others who throw around allegations against Democrats are given a pass in this regard?

Really needs clarification, StrkSrviver.