In a stunning revelation, Twitter’s former security chief told US Congress that the social media platform knowingly allowed India to add its agents to the company’s roster even as China too placed at least one agent there from its intelligence service.
Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a respected cybersecurity expert and Twitter whistleblower, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to make these and other damning allegations against the company.
The presence of these agents at Twitter, according to Zatko, meant that they potentially had access to sensitive user data. Add to that the fact that some 50 percent of the social media platform’s more than 7,000 employees could potentially access sensitive personal data of its 400 million users, and it offers a measure of Twitter’s security problems.
“I’m here today because Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators, and even its own board of directors,” Zatko, who headed Twitter’s security department from November 2020 to January 2022, told the Judiciary Committee, adding, “The company’s cybersecurity failures make it vulnerable to exploitation, causing real harm to real people.”
His sworn testimony will only add to the embattled social media platform’s continuing woes, including Tesla chief Elon Musk notoriously reneging on his offer to buy it at $44 billion predominantly on the claim that Twitter has not provided him with accurate figures about the number of users as well as security...
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