Twitter could face a fallout after its ex-security chief said the company has troubling security issues
Flying the coop… Twitter’s in the spotlight (again) after a newly released whistleblower report alleged that the company’s security policies aren't… secure. Last month, its former security chief Peiter Zatko filed a 200-page report accusing the blue bird of everything from reckless cybersecurity negligence to underreporting spam-bot accounts. Zatko had joined Twitter in 2020 to help build its security division but was let go in January for “poor performance.”
- Zatko says: More than half of Twitter’s 500K servers are using out-of-date software, and over a quarter of staff computers have disabled important security updates.
- Twitter says: The report paints a “false narrative” of the company, and security and privacy issues have “long been company-wide priorities.”
- The report comes at a convenient time for Elon Musk, who recently subpoenaed Twitter’s founder and former CEO for docs that might support his attempt to back out of buying the company.
- Twitter shares fell 7% yesterday after the news, ending the Musk-related rebound.
Twitter’s security snafus… are piling up. In 2020 it suffered a major celeb hack that compromised blue-check accounts from President Biden and Kim K to Uber and Apple. Despite ramping up security, the company had another hack last month that exposed the data of 5M+ users.
Losing trust is costly... and Twitter could suffer if the claims are determined to be true. The report’s being reviewed by FTC regulators, who could impose pricey penalties if warranted. In May, Twitter agreed to pay the FTC $150M for violating a 2011 rule that prohibited the company from profiting from deceptively collected user data. ICYMI: In 2019, the FTC hit Facebook with a record $5B penalty for violating consumer privacy.