narrative about our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. when we spoke to zatko and his lawyer, they said the lawful whistle-blower disclosure process only allows them to talk about the issues in general terms. for specific allegations they referred us to zatko s disclosure. i won t go into details. mudge stands by the disclosure and the allegations in there. reporter: cnn and the washington post obtained a copy of the disclosure from a senior democratic official on capitol hill. in it, zatko claims nearly half of twitter s employees have access to some of the platform s main critical controls. there is an analogy of an airplane. so you get get on an airplane and every passenger and the attendant crew all have access to the cockpit, to the controls, that s entirely unnecessary, might be easy, but it is too easy to accidentally or intentionally turn an engine off. twitter accounts belonging to a
airplane. so, you get on an airplane, and every passenger and the attendant crew all have access to the cockpit, to the controls, you know, that s entirely unnecessary. it might be easy, but it s too easy to accidentally or intentionally turn an engine off. twitter accounts belonging to a whole lot of famous people. reporter: that kind of access contributed to the massive attack in the summer of 2020 when hackers, two of them teenagers, tricked a couple of twitter employees into letting them into twitter s systems. that gave them access to accounts, including that of then presidential candidate joe biden. i don t have to tell you the significance of being able to breach the twitter accounts with many millions of followers, including of leading politicians, three months from a presidential election. reporter: in the disclosure, you quote from a wired magazine article that says, but if a teenager with access to an administration panel can bring the company to its knees, just im
it helps elon musk and the walk away from the twitter takeover deal. whistleblower is twitter s former head of security who is a former hacker that was hired after the infamous hacks of celebrity and politician accounts back in 2020. he is filing a complaint not only with the justice department, but the ftc and accusing twitter of misleading regulators, investors and users, and serious lapses posing as a national security risk. also accusing one or more employees of being outright spies. there s an analogy of an airplane. you get on the airplane and every passenger and the attendant crew all have access to the cockpit, to the controls, you know, that s entirely unnecessary. might be easy. the in response, twitter says he was fired from his senior executive role at twitter in january for ineffective leadership and poor performance, adding what we have seen is a
disclosure. in it, he claims nearly half of twitter s employees have access to some of the platform s main critical controls. there s an analogy of an airplane. you get on an airplane, and every passenger and the attendant crew all have access to the cockpit, to the controls, that s entirely unnecessary. it might be easy, but it s too easy to accidentally or intentionally turn an engine off. that kind of access contributed to the massive attack in the summer of 2020 when hackers, two of them teenagers, tricked a couple twitter employees into letting them into twitter s systems. if you re running any system, the more people that have access to the main switches, that s a very risky situation. yes, absolutely. i m talking in generalities, just large tech companies need to know what the risks are and then they also need to have an appetite to go fix it. twitter told cnn that since the 2020 hack it had improved
when we spoke to zatko and his lawyer, they said the lawful whistle-blower disclosure process only allows them to talk about the issues in general terms. for specific allegations they referred us to zatko s disclosure. i m not going to go into details, but i will say mudge stands by the disclosure and the allegations in there. reporter: cnn and the washington post obtained a copy of the disclosure from a senior democratic official on capitol hill. in it, zatko claims nearly half of twitter s employees have access to some of the platform s main critical controls. there is an analogy of an airplane. so you get get on an airplane and every passenger and the attendant crew all have access to the cockpit, to the controls, that s entirely unnecessary, might be easy, but it is too easy to accidentally or intentionally turn an engine off. twitter accounts belonging to a whole lot of famous people reporter: that kind of access contributed to the massive attack in the summer of 202