Among the many damning allegations in the newly released Twitter whistleblower complaint, is the disquieting revelation that Twitter was unable to seal its production environment to guard against any potential insider threats amid the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Twitter’s former head of security Peiter “Mudge” Zatko has accused Twitter of serious cybersecurity negligence in an expansive new complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Justice Department. Among allegations that range from poor data protection to FTC violations, the complaint indicates Twitter lacked the ability to protect itself if any of its own employees went rogue.
This issue was discovered on January 6, after a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol Building. As a precaution, Zatko had wanted to lock down Twitter's internal systems and found that was not an option.
Zatko said he asked the executive in charge of engineering how Twitter could seal its production environment to keep it protected from any internal threats from staff who may have supported the rioters. The complaint explains that Zatko didn't want any employees to access or potentially damage the production environment as the Capitol attack was underway.
What he found, however, was that such a lockdown wasn't just difficult -- it was allegedly impossible.
"All engineers had access," the complaint states. "There was no logging of who went into the environment or what they...
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