The Biden administration hired a well-known hacker and the former head of security at Twitter who made headlines last year when he publicly alleged the company’s executives put “profits over security.”
Peiter Zatko – also known by his hacker name Mudge – will join the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA in a part-time role.
The Washington Post first reported the move.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, CISA Director Jen Easterly wrote she is “SUPER PUMPED” to welcome Zatko to the team, calling him an “O.G. Hacker” and saying he will help advance secure by design.
Secure by design is an effort to encourage technology providers and software developers to prioritize consumer safety during the design phase of products to “reduce the number of exploitable flaws before they are introduced to the market for broad use or consumption.”
Just last week, for instance, CISA announced it secured voluntary pledges from six K-12 school software technology providers committing to designing products with a larger focus on security built in.
In March, the Biden administration released a national cybersecurity strategy which, among other things, called for software companies to be held legally liable if their products don’t follow or meet security best practices.
Last year, Zatko – who served as Twitter’s security chief from November 2020 through January 2022, when he was fired – filed a whistleblower disclosure in which he painted the social media giant as dysfunctional when it comes to its online security and the data it collects, putting national security and some users’ safety at risk.
He then drew widespread attention when he testified about such allegations before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A Twitter spokesperson at the time denied the claims and said Zatko was fired for ineffective leadership and poor performance.
Zatko said he was fired after raising his security concerns internally.
At the time of Zatko’s tenure at the company, Twitter was under different ownership.
