Twitter’s security deficiencies exposed by former CSO

ZDNET reports that Twitter has been revealed to have significant user privacy protection and content moderation deficiencies in a whistleblower testimony by former Twitter Chief Security Officer Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko. More than 50% of the social media company's 500,000 data center servers were not on compliant operating systems or kernels and many could not encrypt at rest last year, while over 30% of employee computers did not have software and security updates enabled, claimed Zatko in his 86-page redacted report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Despite the lack of a mobile device management system and insider threat risk monitoring for employees, nearly 50% of Twitter's employees were allowed live production system and user data access, Zatko alleged. Twitter also allegedly experienced a data center failure in the spring of 2021 that could have made the platform offline permanently. Moreover, Zatko alleged that misleading statements regarding data security, privacy, and integrity have also been made by the platform.