Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko portrayed the social-media giant as a cesspool of cybersecurity and privacy risks in dramatic Congressional testimony on Tuesday — and even claimed the site had at least one undercover Chinese agent on its payroll.
Zatko, a famed hacker who worked as Twitter’s head of security between November 2020 and early this year, was called to testify after he filed a dramatic whistleblower complaint in August alleging that the site poses a risk to national security. Twitter has accused him of making misleading claims.
The whistleblower claimed in his Tuesday testimony that thousands of Twitter employees — potentially including spies — have access to sensitive user data including private messages, current locations, home addresses and phone numbers.
He said that Twitter did not know the alleged Chinese agent was on its payroll until the company was contacted by the FBI.
“I had been told, because the corporate security, physical security team had been contacted and told there was at least one agent of the [Ministry of State Security], which is one of China’s intelligence services, on the payroll inside Twitter,” Zatko said.
He also reiterated previous claims that Twitter employed at least one Indian agent — and testified that Twitter was woefully ill-equipped to deal with an array of security challenges because top executives failed to heed his concerns.
“While it was disturbing to hear [about spying at Twitter], I and many others,...
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