Twitter names famed hacker ‘Mudge’ as head of security- Technology News, Firstpost

ReutersNov 17, 2020 01:15:40 IST

By Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Social media large Twitter Inc, underneath elevated risk of regulation and stricken by severe safety breaches, is appointing one of many world’s best-regarded hackers to sort out every thing from engineering missteps to misinformation.

The corporate on Monday named Peiter Zatko, broadly recognized by his hacker deal with Mudge, to the brand new place of head of safety, giving him a broad mandate to suggest adjustments in construction and practices. Zatko solutions to CEO Jack Dorsey and is anticipated to take over administration of key safety features after a 45- to 60-day evaluation.

In an unique interview, Zatko mentioned he’ll look at “data safety, website integrity, bodily safety, platform integrity — which begins to the touch on abuse and manipulation of the platform — and engineering.”

Zatko most lately oversaw safety on the digital funds unicorn Stripe. Earlier than that, he labored on particular tasks at Google and oversaw handing out grants for tasks on cybersecurity on the Pentagon’s famed Protection Superior Analysis and Tasks Company (DARPA).

Zatko’s colourful profession started within the Nineteen Nineties, when he concurrently performed categorized work for a authorities contractor and was among the many leaders of Cult of the Lifeless Cow, a hacking group infamous for releasing Home windows hacking instruments with the intention to goad Microsoft into bettering safety. https://reut.rs/2IxWD3Q

“I do not know if anybody can repair Twitter’s safety, however he’d be on the prime of my listing,” mentioned Dan Kaufman, who supervised Zatko at DARPA and now leads the superior merchandise group at Google.

Twitter faces quite a few safety challenges. A 12 months in the past, the U.S. authorities accused two males of spying for Saudi Arabia once they labored at Twitter years earlier, saying that they handed alongside non-public details about the dominion’s critics. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL2N27M2AC

In July, a gaggle of younger hackers tricked staff and gained entry to inner instruments, which allow them to change account settings after which tweet from the accounts of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, Microsoft founder Invoice Gates and Tesla Chief Government Elon Musk. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN24O34E.

“The information breach this summer time was an vital reminder of how far Twitter must go in constructing among the fundamental safety features essential to run a service focused by adversaries way more expert than the youngsters arrested for that incident,” mentioned Alex Stamos, a former Fb chief safety officer and present Stanford researcher who has helped lead efforts to struggle election disinformation.

Stamos, who as soon as labored for Zatko’s safety consultancy, known as him an awesome match for an organization missing the monetary muscle of Fb and Google. “They will have to search out inventive options to those issues, and if Mudge is legendary for something in safety, it’s being inventive.”

Zatko mentioned he was dedicated to bettering public conversations on Twitter. He praised a latest transfer to extend “friction” by prompting customers to remark as a substitute of merely retweeting; a subsequent step could possibly be to pressure folks to grasp a protracted dialog earlier than collaborating in it, he mentioned.

Zatko mentioned he appreciated Twitter’s openness to unconventional safety approaches, similar to his proposal for complicated unhealthy actors by manipulating the info they obtain from Twitter about how folks work together with their posts.

“They’re keen to take some dangers,” Zatko mentioned of his new employer. “With the challenges of algorithms and algorithmic bias, they don’t seem to be standing by and ready till another person solves the issue.”

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco. Enhancing by Jonathan Weber and Richard Pullin)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost employees and is generated by auto-feed.