Twitter isn't the largest company on the web, and is a far cry from Facebook.
But still, it has the influence that can reach almost all corners of the web, and has been one of the primary ways for many people to express their opinions and get information.
Unfortunately for Twitter, it's experiencing increased threat of regulation and plagued by serious security breaches.
This is why Twitter is recruiting one of the world's best-regarded and most-respected hackers as part of its team.
Peiter C. Zatko, or widely known by his hacker handle 'Mudge', he is tasked to help Twitter tackle everything from engineering missteps to misinformation.
Recruited by Twitter to be its head of security, Zatko is mandated to recommend changes in structure and practices to the platform. Zatko answers only to CEO Jack Dorsey.
Besides being 'Mudge' the hacker, Zatko is also known as a network security expert, open-source programmer, and also a writer.
In the past and among his previous works, Zatko was the most prominent member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht, and also as one of the members in the hacking cooperative the Cult of the Dead Cow.
Zatko pioneered buffer overflow work, and had also released security advisories about early flaws in code injection, race condition, side-channel attack, exploitation of embedded systems, and cryptanalysis of commercial systems. Zatko was also the original author of the password cracking software L0phtCrack, AntiSniff, and l0phtwatch.
With his achievements, he was given a position at Pentagon’s famed Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA), where he was tasked with cybersecurity research.
This made Zatko one of the first people from the hacker community to reach out and build relationships with government and industry. Zatko also became a public speaker in certain occasions, including at hacker conferences such as DEF CON and academic conferences such as USENIX.
After that, Zatko worked for Google, before finally landing on Twitter.
In an interview, Zatko said he will examine “information security, site integrity, physical security, platform integrity - which starts to touch on abuse and manipulation of the platform - and engineering.”
Zatko also said that he is committed into improving public conversations on Twitter.
He praised Twitter's approach in increasing “friction” by prompting users to comment instead of simply retweeting. According to him, the next step could be to force people to understand a long conversation before participating in it.
Zatko also appreciated Twitter’s openness to unconventional security approaches.
“They are willing to take some risks,” Zatko said of Twitter.
“With the challenges of algorithms and algorithmic bias, they are not standing by and waiting until someone else solves the problem.”
Back in July, hackers managed to take control of many prominent Twitter users, and tricked their followers into giving them money.
The alleged mastermind was only a teenager. But the data breach was an important reminder of how far Twitter needs to go into building some of the basic security functions necessary to run a service targeted by hackers.
In the ever-growing world of tech that puts cybersecurity in an utmost importance, Twitter needs to deal and capable of thwarting adversaries that are also much more skilled than the teenager
Twitter needs to find some solutions to solve its security issues, and 'Mudge' here can help Twitter with that.
Zatko has carved his name as one of the most famous cybersecurity expert. And Twitter hired him, knowing that he should know how to deal with the issues, and know how to remove the toxicity of its platform.
“I don’t know if anyone can fix Twitter’s security, but he’d be at the top of my list,” said Dan Kaufman, who was a Zatko's supervisor at DARPA, referring to Zatko.
Following the announcement, Zatko is expected to take head Twitter's security team in 45 to 60 days after a security review has been completed.