Peter Zatko is the former Security head at Twitter. He has recently made headlines for accusing the social media company of breaching security guidelines, practising negligent security practices, breaching federal regulations and willfully failing to estimate bots on its platforms. 

The Security Chief of the multi-billion dollar company was fired early this year, followed series of blistering accusations of false cyber-security defences and violation of terms of FTC settlements. Zatko filed the complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice.

Who is Peiter Zatko? 

Zatko, popularly known as Mudge, is the world-renowned ethical hacker, programmer, and top cybersecurity expert in the US. He was the most active member of a hacker think tank called L0pht and the computer and culture hacking cooperative the Cult of the Dead Cow. The group was infamous for its hacking procedures and eventually virtually compelled Microsoft to improve its security protocols. 

Also Read: 5 takeaways from Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko

Zatko, 51, was born in 1970. He graduated from Berklee College of Music and is an adept guitar player. He was one of the first persons to conduct early research into a type of security vulnerability knowns as the buffer overflow.

Mudge began his professional career as a program manager at DARPA, where he supervised cyber-security research. In DARPA, he laid the foundational stones of Cyber Analytical Framework to analyse DoD investments.  During his tenure, he ran at least three DoD programs known as Military Networking Protocol (MNP), Cyber-Insider Threat (CINDER), and Cyber Fast Track (CFT). 

Twitter head Jack Dorsey hired Zatko when the internet company suffered a massive cyberattack in 2020. Zatko retained his position as the security lead from November 2020 to January 2022. 

Before joining Twitter, Zatko worked in Stripe and also conducted illustrious projects at Google.