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Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

cnn.com

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Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#341

Post by shagie »

shadowgovt wrote: post #215
purpleblue wrote: post #167

Millenials and GenZ may have no idea who Mudge is. I, however, almost lost my first job out of college at a bank because I ran l0phtcrack against our Windows NT 4 server to see if it could crack passwords. I showed my boss, and he pulled me aside into another room and tore my head off for irresponsibly running this tool against a production server. He said I could have been fired if this got out, but he covered my as…

I don't because I'm not seeing an organization that will hold them accountable. - This Congress is ill-equipped to understand tech, much less hold it accountable. As long as the people are happy, Congress is happy. - Lord knows the people are ill-equipped to get how bad this is. They already watched this company allow a rogue employee to shut off the account of the President of the United States (before they chose to…

> - This Congress is ill-equipped to understand tech, much less hold it accountable. As long as the people are happy, Congress is happy.

There's an article I was introduced to yesterday: Do We Need a New Digital Regulatory Agency in the U.S.?

It argues that it it is the agencies and the experts within the agencies that need to become more technologically literate to be able to advise creation and implement the laws that have tech impacts.

Congress isn't supposed to be experts on subjects, they're supposed to be the representatives of their people with occasional domain knowledge in certain areas of importance to their constituents. We can't (and shouldn't) expect every member of congress to be an IT expert.

https://techpolicy.press/do-we-need-a-new-digital-regulatory... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32555365 )

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#342

Post by kmeisthax »

Beldin wrote: post #189
winternett wrote: post #89

Honestly, can you really trust anything about major social media sites any more? Has Twitter ever been in the news for properly making even a thousand people successful from scratch really ever in the product's life? They have pipelines of exploitation for everyone that gets "discovered" into contractual nightmare deals, they require tons of free labor and costly hurdles just to become notable and visible on the plat…

> Has Twitter ever been in the news for properly making even a thousand people successful from scratch really ever in the product's life? There was the Arab Spring ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring ), where it played a significant role.

The Arab Spring should have been looked at as a warning sign, but everyone in America was still in full-on neoconservative "we will be welcomed as liberators" mode. No private company should have the power to overthrow governments.

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#343

Post by winternett »

wpietri wrote: post #312
winternett wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not even trending on Twitter, which is not really surprising. There is nothing more evident about the fatal flaws in social media than when news concerning a platform is suppressed on the cited platform. It highlights the failure of democracy they always purport, and it shows that they really shouldn't display a social "trending" page, because it is subject constantly to the politics and profit making of e…

> There is nothing more evident about the fatal flaws in social media than when news concerning a platform is suppressed on the cited platform. I just looked at the Trending panel and "Mudge" is #12 for me, with 4333 tweets. #11 is "Taco Tuesday", with 4172 tweets. #7 is "Virgo" with 98,500 tweets. So I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of suppression. I think it's just a pretty niche story. I think the allegations are…

Everyone has a different trending timeline on Twitter which is now more based on who they follow. The trending timeline is "baked" and dictated also by moderators and paid promotion often... It's why topics like "K-POP" trend so much, even for people that don't even listen to it at all.

If you follow tech personalities, there's a higher chance you'll see the news.

On my music account on Twitter, I don't follow tech personalities and tech news outlets, but I do follow CNN Breaking News, and nothing about this major story has popped up all day long.

This is how the Twitter trending timeline is artificially baked... This story is a very big deal for everyone on Twitter, yet only a fraction of its user base will see the story. Privacy is important to every user on the platform, you'd think Twitter leadership at least would be trying to get a grip on the story first within the platform in a very public manner.

It happens on every major social platform at key points too, highlighting the conflict in their ability to maintain proper social credibility as platforms that report on trends that news channels and other institutions regularly cite.

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#344

Post by themitigating »

Banana699 wrote: post #309
encryptluks2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because a random bakery shop is totally like a pseudo-monopolistic social media giant that can censor millions arbitarily and at will.

it's not a monopoly because there are alternatives, and it only has a 10% market share in the US (https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/united-sta...).

The bakery also sets precedent as it did go to the supreme court, and it was used as a rallying cry by politicians on the right.

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#345

Post by NelsonMinar »

vlan0 wrote: post #36

Eh, you could take out Twitter and insert many other company names and it'll still hold true. And those companies hold so much more sensitive data about you than Twitter. I know of insurance companies that have help desk employees with domain admin access. And all crippling ransomware attacks take advantage lax permissions. This is rampant. How is this a story?

Twitter is under a consent agreement with the FTC about its security practices. Part of the allegations here is that they've been lying to those regulators.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2011/03/...

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#346

Post by pb7 »

josefresco wrote: post #324
prophesi wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all speculating here. But if I were a betting man, I do think both Twitter and Mudge's respective track records would place me in Mudge's camp.

I don't know Mudge and neither does 99.9% of the public. His timing here is suspect. If these problems existed for so long, why now?

He just got fired in January. Preparing a 200-page legal document with references and accounts takes time. It had been submitted some time ago, it's only now that CNN got a hold of a copy.

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#347

Post by prophesi »

josefresco wrote: post #324
prophesi wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all speculating here. But if I were a betting man, I do think both Twitter and Mudge's respective track records would place me in Mudge's camp.

I don't know Mudge and neither does 99.9% of the public. His timing here is suspect. If these problems existed for so long, why now?

I'm not sure why any sizeable portion of the public would know _any_ reputable cyber security experts. Twitter's CEO said the firing was due to "the impact on top priority work", and whistleblowing 6 months later isn't a surprising timeline when you need to have long talks with an attorney and get your own work-life situated.

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#348

Post by andrewflnr »

melony wrote: post #337
purpleblue wrote: post #167

Millenials and GenZ may have no idea who Mudge is. I, however, almost lost my first job out of college at a bank because I ran l0phtcrack against our Windows NT 4 server to see if it could crack passwords. I showed my boss, and he pulled me aside into another room and tore my head off for irresponsibly running this tool against a production server. He said I could have been fired if this got out, but he covered my as…

There's a simpler explanation. He is doing this for profit. I don't buy all the speculation that he approached the SEC out of some professional obligation or simply to spite the Twitter leadership. As a former executive he most likely still holds stock and having the price plunge is not exactly in his interest unless the pay-off from whistleblowing is high enough. Given his high profile, he just burned all bridges ca…

You've not really made an argument that it's a simpler explanation, just listed a bunch of reasons it's unlikely he'll profit from this, topped with pure speculation that he will anyway.

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#349

Post by jfoster »

zimpenfish wrote: post #118
tyjen wrote: post #75

"The whistleblower also says Twitter executives don't have the resources to fully understand the true number of bots on the platform, and were not motivated to." I imagine this hurts Twitter's defense against Musk from pulling out of the takeover deal, or, is this whistleblower's account inadmissible?

> I imagine this hurts Twitter's defense against Musk from pulling out of the takeover deal Not really because they have consistently said "this is what we do, it's a finger in the air estimate based on sampling, it might be right, it might be wildly wrong, there's no agreed methodology for this". For someone to then go "they don't fully understand the true number of bots! GOTCHA!" is dumb because it's literally just…

The problem I have in assigning credibility to Twitter's position on bots is that they seem to have held multiple seemingly inconsistent positions (all paraphrased):

1. "Finger in the air estimate based on sampling", aka. "don't read too much into it"

2. "Not more than 5%"

3. "Methodology can't be understood externally"

Re: Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies

#350

Post by BeFlatXIII »

kmeisthax wrote: post #342
Beldin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has Twitter ever been in the news for properly making even a thousand people successful from scratch really ever in the product's life? There was the Arab Spring ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring ), where it played a significant role.

The Arab Spring should have been looked at as a warning sign, but everyone in America was still in full-on neoconservative "we will be welcomed as liberators" mode. No private company should have the power to overthrow governments.

> no private company should have the power to overthrow governments

Go tell that to Raytheon and Blackwater as well.

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