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At this point, the Twitter board needs to bring in an outside investigatory team. Mudge, who is well respected in the industry, is saying the executives are ly

At this point, the Twitter board needs to bring in an outside investigatory team. Mudge, who is well respected in the industry, is saying the executives are lying to the board. Twitter’s CEO publicly mocks him, refuses to testify to Congress, and instead we hear that people are being offered money to dish dirt on their respected colleague. If Twitter’s board does not act, then they’re willfully ignorant to the behavior and that negligence is going to harm investors. Lastly, if the board does not act, then the investors need to bring this to vote at the next shareholder meeting.

vmoore 4y ago
> Mudge, who is well respected in the industry Keep in mind, although he's classed as an 'ethical' hacker, many whitehats come from blackhat backgrounds, and turned whitehat because of fear of getting caught up in draconian CFAA[0] trials. Every hacker in their youth done some stupid stuff that could haunt them later. If you didn't do stupid stuff in your youth, you never really grew or learned from it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
- nekoashide 4y ago
  That's why you don't request your personal file from the FBI, either they have a file on you from your youth or you have given them reason to suspect you did something at some point. I'm curious, but not that curious.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Tens of thousands of people FOIA their DOJ files each year. Unless you're already pinged for something, I doubt the FBI is going to expend any additional effort solely because you've asked for some personal files.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >If you didn't do stupid stuff in your youth, you never really grew or learned from it. So, he's... just like most people? Do you have any specific incident(s) to point to, re: Mudge, or is this just speculation that can be applied to nearly everyone?
- marshray 4y ago
  Mudge held a significant position within the Department of Defense. That doesn't happen without having any skeletons in your closet identified and investigated.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    > That doesn't happen without having any skeletons in your closet identified and investigated. Yup. They would have gone in with a proctoscope, and would not have tossed him an ID card, unless he could completely convince them that he's good for it. If they are looking for dirt, they won't get it. I assume they are intelligent people, and know that, so maybe they are actually doing what has been suggested; looking for as much accurate information as possible -either way. NPD is a multibillion-dollar company, because they sell accurate information; not information that people want to hear (how they get that information, well, that's another matter).
    - cma 4y ago
      > They would have gone in with a proctoscope, and would not have tossed him an ID card, unless he could completely convince them that he's good for it. Astronauts undergo detailed psyche exams, personality evaluations, and usually have some level of security clearance. And yet.. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak
      - brigandish 4y ago
        11 years after getting clearance she committed assault as a jilted/cheated lover and that somehow means they missed something? How is that relevant to whether someone has a skeleton in the closet when they are getting a background check?
    - mc32 4y ago
      Not only that, but we know fabrications happen and take years to dispel. If a powerful entity wants to ruin your reputation, they can and do not need truth behind them. It's courageous for him to speak the truth (at least his observations) when they were unwilling to and actively try to undermine it.
- gnu8 4y ago
  This is a no-true-Scotsman argument where none was asked for, but thank you for linking to Wikipedia properly. “Ethical” hacker is also a nonsense term. Ethics means the study of moral philosophy, it is not a synonym for “good” and to use it as such belies a superficial understanding of both morality and hacking.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > “Ethical” [...] is not a synonym for “good” I think it's generally accepted that these days it is a synonym for, if not "good" per se, at least "morally acceptable".
- bitexploder 4y ago
  I got into infosec consulting perfectly cleanly, as did most of my peers. Sure some of them were involved in shenanigans in the distant past, but that is a very broad brush to paint with and seems out of place here given zero specific knowledge about Mudge and what he may or may not have done just because he is in an industry where some people occasionally did some questionable things in the past.
munificent 4y ago
> that negligence is going to harm investors. Only if the truth comes out. If you can control the narrative long enough, it becomes indistinguishable from reality, at least as far as the markets are concerned.
anm89 4y ago
You are speaking from the alternate universe where people care if any of this stuff is ethical. In reality only a tiny cohort of message board nerds (I'm including myself) care and 95% of twitter users, if they ever hear about it all will be over it in about 5 seconds.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  But activist shareholders could sue the board / executives for breach of their duties and get money out of it. Whether or not they actually care, they could pretend to care in order to profit from it. Regardless if it’s true, they could say they lost out on Elons buyout because the board acted inappropriately before and during the buyout negotiations.
  - nawgz 4y ago
    You are making the risk assessment the expected value of legal action is higher than the expected value of market returns or other applications of that same fund. I'm not sure where you gained such confidence.
- throwoutway 4y ago
  Fiduciary responsibility is not an alternate universe. Neither are ethics rules. Publicly traded companies have many rules they need to follow, and executives & board members can face suits & fines for breaking them
phpisthebest 4y ago
>>being offered money to dish dirt on their respected colleague. that dirt also better be security related, not digging up ex's or that he told an offensive joke one time at a conference years ago which seems to be the SOP for "dirt" these days
criddell 4y ago
Why did Twitter pick Agrawal for their CEO. I hadn't read anything about him before Mudge's revelations and every single thing I've read since has not been kind to him. He seems to be doing a really bad job navigating this event and nobody appears to have any respect for the guy. But you don't get to be CEO of a company the size of Twitter if you are this bad at managing. So, what's going on?
- googlryas 4y ago
  I've wondered the same thing. He had one of the most epic upward trajectories of anyone ever going from rank and file to CEO of a multibillion dollar company. Did he even have any other job on his resume? I assume he has some connections that let him shoot up through the ranks. I think his wife is a general partner at a16z, maybe that has something to do with it? But a lot of people fit that bill who might want to get their bestie listed as CEO
- programmarchy 4y ago
  Maybe Jack saw a shitstorm on the horizon, and Agrawal was naive or willing enough to become the patsy?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Maybe every other possible executive at the company knew how to read the tea leaves? A lot of people don't want to be company CEOs because it's a lot more visible and higher-pressure than merely being CXO or SVP of X.
    - shaburn 4y ago
      Also can carry serious criminal liability via Enron Response Regulation Sarbanes Oxley "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires the CEO and CFO of publicly traded companies to issue a statement certifying that the accompanying financial statements and disclosures fairly present, in all material respects, the operations and financial condition of the company."
spfzero 4y ago
The board's behavior is a really interesting point. On one hand, they are doing the owners (stockholders) a dis-service by first being gullible enough to be successfully kept ignorant about the company's security situation, and then not making rapid management changes upon being alerted to it(by Mudge, it seems). On the other hand, if they can successfully get Musk to pay the offer price, they have then represented the owners interests very effectively. The fact that the case is coming up soon makes me think that the board thinks they can focus on the case for now, and fix the company's problems later, after the case, if they win it. If the case looses, they'll be out of a job anyway and it will be some other board's problem.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  > The board's behavior is a really interesting point The board know about the poor security. But they also see the Equifax leak (far worse than the data twitter holds), and how small that fine was, and they make the conscious decision not to invest in security. They also know they might be given government incentive money/contracts to increase security against foreign agents. If they do the work now, they won't get paid that money. Win win!
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Thank you for pointing out that the Equifax data breach was much worse. Twitter is just an easy target because politicians use the platform to spread their political message, and so if they can threaten them then that only helps the platform cater to their cause.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      > if they can threaten them Im going to leak your public tweets or else
      - bigtacos 4y ago
spywaregorilla 4y ago
The board and the shareholders are massively incentivized not to show that the execs are lying though, even if they know for certain that they are lying.
silisili 4y ago
The fact that he is still CEO tells me all I need to know about the board. Mudge is a seriously decorated security expert. Parag is a nobody. The second he tried to discredit Mudge, he should have been out. But here we are. I wouldn't touch that stock with my worst enemy's money.

vmoore 4y ago

> Mudge, who is well respected in the industry Keep in mind, although he's classed as an 'ethical' hacker, many whitehats come from blackhat backgrounds, and turned whitehat because of fear of getting caught up in draconian CFAA[0] trials. Every hacker in their youth done some stupid stuff that could haunt them later. If you didn't do stupid stuff in your youth, you never really grew or learned from it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

nekoashide 4y ago
That's why you don't request your personal file from the FBI, either they have a file on you from your youth or you have given them reason to suspect you did something at some point. I'm curious, but not that curious.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Tens of thousands of people FOIA their DOJ files each year. Unless you're already pinged for something, I doubt the FBI is going to expend any additional effort solely because you've asked for some personal files.
jjulius 4y ago
>If you didn't do stupid stuff in your youth, you never really grew or learned from it. So, he's... just like most people? Do you have any specific incident(s) to point to, re: Mudge, or is this just speculation that can be applied to nearly everyone?
marshray 4y ago
Mudge held a significant position within the Department of Defense. That doesn't happen without having any skeletons in your closet identified and investigated.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > That doesn't happen without having any skeletons in your closet identified and investigated. Yup. They would have gone in with a proctoscope, and would not have tossed him an ID card, unless he could completely convince them that he's good for it. If they are looking for dirt, they won't get it. I assume they are intelligent people, and know that, so maybe they are actually doing what has been suggested; looking for as much accurate information as possible -either way. NPD is a multibillion-dollar company, because they sell accurate information; not information that people want to hear (how they get that information, well, that's another matter).
  - cma 4y ago
    > They would have gone in with a proctoscope, and would not have tossed him an ID card, unless he could completely convince them that he's good for it. Astronauts undergo detailed psyche exams, personality evaluations, and usually have some level of security clearance. And yet.. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak
    - brigandish 4y ago
      11 years after getting clearance she committed assault as a jilted/cheated lover and that somehow means they missed something? How is that relevant to whether someone has a skeleton in the closet when they are getting a background check?
  - mc32 4y ago
    Not only that, but we know fabrications happen and take years to dispel. If a powerful entity wants to ruin your reputation, they can and do not need truth behind them. It's courageous for him to speak the truth (at least his observations) when they were unwilling to and actively try to undermine it.
gnu8 4y ago
This is a no-true-Scotsman argument where none was asked for, but thank you for linking to Wikipedia properly. “Ethical” hacker is also a nonsense term. Ethics means the study of moral philosophy, it is not a synonym for “good” and to use it as such belies a superficial understanding of both morality and hacking.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > “Ethical” [...] is not a synonym for “good” I think it's generally accepted that these days it is a synonym for, if not "good" per se, at least "morally acceptable".
bitexploder 4y ago
I got into infosec consulting perfectly cleanly, as did most of my peers. Sure some of them were involved in shenanigans in the distant past, but that is a very broad brush to paint with and seems out of place here given zero specific knowledge about Mudge and what he may or may not have done just because he is in an industry where some people occasionally did some questionable things in the past.

munificent 4y ago

> that negligence is going to harm investors. Only if the truth comes out. If you can control the narrative long enough, it becomes indistinguishable from reality, at least as far as the markets are concerned.

anm89 4y ago

You are speaking from the alternate universe where people care if any of this stuff is ethical. In reality only a tiny cohort of message board nerds (I'm including myself) care and 95% of twitter users, if they ever hear about it all will be over it in about 5 seconds.

colechristensen 4y ago
But activist shareholders could sue the board / executives for breach of their duties and get money out of it. Whether or not they actually care, they could pretend to care in order to profit from it. Regardless if it’s true, they could say they lost out on Elons buyout because the board acted inappropriately before and during the buyout negotiations.
- nawgz 4y ago
  You are making the risk assessment the expected value of legal action is higher than the expected value of market returns or other applications of that same fund. I'm not sure where you gained such confidence.
throwoutway 4y ago
Fiduciary responsibility is not an alternate universe. Neither are ethics rules. Publicly traded companies have many rules they need to follow, and executives & board members can face suits & fines for breaking them

phpisthebest 4y ago

>>being offered money to dish dirt on their respected colleague. that dirt also better be security related, not digging up ex's or that he told an offensive joke one time at a conference years ago which seems to be the SOP for "dirt" these days

criddell 4y ago

Why did Twitter pick Agrawal for their CEO. I hadn't read anything about him before Mudge's revelations and every single thing I've read since has not been kind to him. He seems to be doing a really bad job navigating this event and nobody appears to have any respect for the guy. But you don't get to be CEO of a company the size of Twitter if you are this bad at managing. So, what's going on?

googlryas 4y ago
I've wondered the same thing. He had one of the most epic upward trajectories of anyone ever going from rank and file to CEO of a multibillion dollar company. Did he even have any other job on his resume? I assume he has some connections that let him shoot up through the ranks. I think his wife is a general partner at a16z, maybe that has something to do with it? But a lot of people fit that bill who might want to get their bestie listed as CEO
programmarchy 4y ago
Maybe Jack saw a shitstorm on the horizon, and Agrawal was naive or willing enough to become the patsy?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Maybe every other possible executive at the company knew how to read the tea leaves? A lot of people don't want to be company CEOs because it's a lot more visible and higher-pressure than merely being CXO or SVP of X.
  - shaburn 4y ago
    Also can carry serious criminal liability via Enron Response Regulation Sarbanes Oxley "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires the CEO and CFO of publicly traded companies to issue a statement certifying that the accompanying financial statements and disclosures fairly present, in all material respects, the operations and financial condition of the company."

spfzero 4y ago

The board's behavior is a really interesting point. On one hand, they are doing the owners (stockholders) a dis-service by first being gullible enough to be successfully kept ignorant about the company's security situation, and then not making rapid management changes upon being alerted to it(by Mudge, it seems). On the other hand, if they can successfully get Musk to pay the offer price, they have then represented the owners interests very effectively. The fact that the case is coming up soon makes me think that the board thinks they can focus on the case for now, and fix the company's problems later, after the case, if they win it. If the case looses, they'll be out of a job anyway and it will be some other board's problem.

londons_explore 4y ago
> The board's behavior is a really interesting point The board know about the poor security. But they also see the Equifax leak (far worse than the data twitter holds), and how small that fine was, and they make the conscious decision not to invest in security. They also know they might be given government incentive money/contracts to increase security against foreign agents. If they do the work now, they won't get paid that money. Win win!
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Thank you for pointing out that the Equifax data breach was much worse. Twitter is just an easy target because politicians use the platform to spread their political message, and so if they can threaten them then that only helps the platform cater to their cause.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    > if they can threaten them Im going to leak your public tweets or else
    - bigtacos 4y ago

spywaregorilla 4y ago

The board and the shareholders are massively incentivized not to show that the execs are lying though, even if they know for certain that they are lying.

silisili 4y ago

The fact that he is still CEO tells me all I need to know about the board. Mudge is a seriously decorated security expert. Parag is a nobody. The second he tried to discredit Mudge, he should have been out. But here we are. I wouldn't touch that stock with my worst enemy's money.