Ex-Twitter workers tells FTC engineers CAN access 'GodMode' program and post ... trends now
Twitter GodMode - an internal tool used by hackers to tweet from high-profile accounts during the site's massive security breach in 2020 - is still available to all of the company's engineers, a whistleblower has claimed.
The bombshell complaint was reportedly filed this month with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and coincides with previous claims made by the company's fired head of security, Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko.
If activated, the program in question, tabbed 'GodMode' by staffers for its outsized power, gives any engineer at the company the ability to tweet from any account, at their own discretion.
The program's existence came to light in July 2020 following a high-profile hack that saw a great number of high profile accounts compromised, masterminded by a then-17-year-old Graham Clark.
The bombshell complaint was reportedly filed with the Federal Trade Commission this week, and coincides with claims made by Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, the company's fired head of security
Accounts seized by Clark and his cronies included Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, and a then campaigning Joe Biden. The breach was only made possible by Twitter's secret backdoor tool, which at the time was unknown to the greater public.
After the hack, Twitter said that it had and taken steps to address any security concerns that may have led to its systems being breached.
Now, more than two years later, an insider familiar with the innerworkings of the San Francisco company contends that is not the case, according to a new report published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal that laid bare the new complaint.
In it, the unnamed whistleblower alleged that aside from changing the name of the tool - from GodMode to 'PrivilegedMode' - the company has continue to allow any of its engineers to freely access the application at will.
Perhaps most troubling, though, is that the complaint alleges that 'Twitter does not have the capability to log which, if any, engineers use or abuse' the program, which still gives staffers the ability to take over pages of any of the site's 450million users.
The program's existence came to light in July 2020 following a high-profile hack that saw a great number of accounts compromised, only made possible by Twitter's secret backdoor tool
The whistleblower spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity due to other employees allegedly being 'threatened and harassed' after airing concerns over the company's security - which the insider said has worsened under new boss Elon Musk.
The Post said that by the time they spoke with the source, the insider had already aired their concerns to both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy and Commerce.
Only a few months earlier, Zatko, a 51-year-old celebrity hacker hired by then-CEO Jack Dorsey in late 2020, told the committee in official testimony that the social network 'was over a decade behind industry security standards,' as well as 'a ticking bomb of security vulnerabilities.'
Fired from the firm in January of that year, Zatko, claims that Twitter had 'extreme, egregious deficiencies' in its protections against hackers saw him reach $7million settlement with the search giant last
