A new Twitter whistleblower has accused the company of having a so-called “GodMode” that allows engineers to tweet from any account. According to The Washington Post, this former Twitter employee has met with Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding Twitter and its security issues.
The whistleblower remains annonymous to prevent harassment and threats. Back on Friday, he/she also had a meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Energy. As per the whistleblower claims, the “GodMode” is now called “privileged mode” following internal objections about the program.
The new Twitter whistleblower continues that any engineer in the company can have access to “GodMode” by changing a code from “FALSE” to “TRUE.” The complaint revealed that anyone who wants to use the feature receives a warning message saying, “THINK BEFORE YOU DO THIS.”
Twitter faces backlash over new whistleblower claims about “GodMode”
The complaint states that the feature allows Twitter employees to tweet on behalf of advertisers. Twitter head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, and former CEO Parag Agrawal have yet refused to comment on the matter.
Following Elon Musk’s takeover, concerns about safety on Twitter are arising, and many users claim the platform is less safe under Musk. Regardless of whether this is true or false, Twitter has had some serious security glitches in recent months. Additionally, its new verification system allowed regular users to impersonate well-known people like politicians, celebrities, and companies.
In 2020 a group of hackers was able to breach into Twitter systems and tweet from Elon Musk and Barack Obama accounts. At the time, Twitter agreed to launch a “comprehensive information security program that is reasonably designed to protect the security, privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of nonpublic consumer information.” However, the existence of a “GodMode” proves Twitter employees have a backdoor to tweet from any user account.
The complaint states that Twitter engineers could delete or restore any tweet, and “Twitter does not have the capability to log which, if any, engineers use or abuse GodMode.”
The first Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko unveiled Twitter security holes before Elon Musk’s takeover. He also revealed that the platform has lied about many security measures. The second whistleblower now says the feature is still available to Twitter fingers, and anyone with access to the engineer’s device can use it.
2023-01-27 15:10:23