Twitter Whistleblower to Testify Before Senate in September

Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko, formerly the top security chief for the company, will testify before the Senate about his recent allegations of major security vulnerabilities at the company and dishonesty by executives. The hearing is scheduled for September 13.

The Washington Post reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Wednesday that Twitter whistleblower and former company security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko will testify before the Senate about his recent allegations that the company purposefully misled regulators about poor security and spam.

The hearing is scheduled for September 13 and Zatko will appear based on a subpoena. The hearing was announced just one day after the Washington Post first reported on Zatko’s whistleblower complaint to federal regulators that claims that Twitter has “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in its security systems.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair and top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, commented: “Mr. Zatko’s allegations of widespread security failures and foreign state actor interference at Twitter raise serious concerns. If these claims are accurate, they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world.”

The lawmakers said that in addition to the hearing they would “take further steps as needed to get to the bottom of these alarming allegations.” The quickly scheduled hearing highlights the political and regulatory pressure being placed on Twitter in light of Zatko’s complaint.

Twitter declined to comment on the hearing, but the company has pushed back on Zatko’s claims. A Twitter spokesperson said that the company has long prioritized security and that Zatko’s disclosures are “riddled with inaccuracies.”

At a town hall on Wednesday, Twitter executives discussed the whistleblower complaint with many trying to make the case for how much the company had done to bolster its security and privacy.

Breitbart News reported on the five key allegations in the whistleblower complaint earlier this week.

1: Twitter is “decades behind” on security
Zatko claims that in comparison to companies such as Google and Facebook, Twitter is “decades behind” in terms of its internal security systems and protocols. He claims that this was in part due to employees having access to internal systems that they should not be able to access.

Breitbart News previously reported on the case of a teenage hacker who posed as a member of Twitter’s IT department in order to gain employees’ credentials which gave him access to the account of public figures including Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The accounts were used to implement a crypto scam.

Read more at the Washington Post here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan