Twitter hires famed hacker 'Mudge' as security head

Twitter on Monday hired Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko as the security head. Zatko is often listed among best hackers in the world; he's expected to take over management of key security functions after a 45- to 60-day review.

Increased threats and security breaches have "forced" the social media giant to take such a step. Earlier, in September, Twitter had hired Rinki Sethi as the chief information officer.

The social media platform has recently faced numerous security challenges, one of the recent being the breach in July. Scammers had hijacked celebrities and politicians' accounts, including President-Elect Joe Biden's, to promote cryptocurrency. It was later found out that the attackers impersonated Twitter's customer support team to steal employees' login credentials.

With a career spanning over 20 years, Zatko has worked with various projects including the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA), he's also been a part of Google. Alex Stamos, a former Facebook chief security officer and current Stanford researcher, has called Zatko a "great fit for Twitter".

In an interview with Reuters, Zatko said that he was he was committed to improving public conversations on Twitter. Zatko also said that he appreciated Twitter's openness to unconventional security approaches, such as his proposal for confusing bad actors by manipulating the data they receive from Twitter about how people interact with their posts.

"With the challenges of algorithms and algorithmic bias, they(twitter) are not standing by and waiting until someone else solves the problem." Zatko further added