Twitter whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko claimed on Tuesday that the microblogging platform knowingly allowed India to add agents to its roster, potentially giving the country access to sensitive data about platform users, while the company employed "at least one agent" from China's intelligence service. In his evidence before the US Senate Committee, Zatko alleged that Twitter is jeopardising its users' privacy, claiming that the company's leadership neglected its engineers while their executive incentives drove them to prioritise business over security. Twitter replied to these allegations by claiming that its recruiting process is "independent of any foreign influence" and that data access is controlled through a variety of safeguards.
According to the Associated Press, Twitter's former security head Peiter Zatko said in court that the firm intentionally permitted the Indian and Chinese governments to deploy their operatives on the company's payroll. The agents may have accessed the company's systems and user data, according to Zatko. The Twitter whistleblower said that the social site was subject to abuse by "teenagers, criminals, and spies," putting users' privacy at danger.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Zatko said that the corporation ignored their engineers because their "executive incentives led them to prioritise profit over security." Twitter's security procedures, according to Zatko, are antiquated, and it runs vulnerable software on more than half of its data centre servers.
He detailed Twitter's failure to deal with nations who attempted to install spies on the microblogging service. He went on to say that Twitter's inability to check how workers accessed user accounts made it impossible for the company to discover potential data abuse on the site.
According to the report, Zatko, who was Twitter's head of security until he was fired early this year, spoke with "high confidence" about a foreign agent placed on Twitter by India's ruling party to "understand the negotiations" between India's ruling party and Twitter about new social media restrictions, and how well those negotiations were going.
The whistleblower also said that a week before his termination, he was informed that "at least one agent" from China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) was "on the payroll" on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Zatko has accused his former firm of cybersecurity incompetence, claiming that it failed to fix "fundamental systemic problems" that engineers advised. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, as well as other top executives and board members, were also accused of many infractions, including making "false and deceptive claims to users and the FTC regarding Twitter's safety."
According to reports, Twitter refuted Zatko's assertions, calling his account of events "a fake narrative... filled with contradictions and falsehoods" and without critical context. The microblogging platform claimed in a statement to the Associated Press that its recruiting process is "independent of any foreign influence," and access to data is maintained through a variety of methods, including background checks, access limits, and monitoring and detection systems and processes.
