Америкалық компьютерлік қауіпсіздік сардары

American computer security expert

Peiter C. Zatko, better known as Mudge, is an American network security expert, open source programmer, writer, and hacker. He was the most prominent member of the high profile hacker think tank the L0pht as well as the computer and culture hacking cooperative the Cult of the Dead Cow. While involved with the L0pht, Mudge contributed to disclosure and education on information and security vulnerabilities. In addition to pioneering buffer overflow work, the security advisories he released contained early examples of flaws in the following areas: code injection, race condition, side channel attack, exploitation of embedded systems, and cryptanalysis of commercial systems. He was the original author of the password cracking software L0phtCrack. In 2010, Mudge accepted a position as a program manager at DARPA where he oversaw cyber security research. In 2013, Mudge went to work for Google in their Advanced Technology & Projects division. He currently works at the security consulting firm Rapid7 that develops Metasploit.

Born in December 1970, Mudge graduated from the Berklee College of Music at the top of his class and is an adept guitar player. Mudge was responsible for early research into a type of security vulnerability known as the buffer overflow. In 1995 he published "How to Write Buffer Overflows", one of the first papers on the topic. He published some of the first security advisories and research demonstrating early vulnerabilities in Unix such as code injection, side channel attacks, and information leaks, and was a leader in the full disclosure movement. He was the initial author of security tools L0phtCrack, AntiSniff, and l0phtwatch. Mudge was one of the first people from the hacker community to reach out and build relationships with government and industry. In demand as a public speaker, he spoke at hacker conferences such as DEF CON and academic conferences such as USENIX. Mudge has also been a member of Cult of the Dead Cow since 1996. The L0pht became the computer security consultancy @stake in 1999, and Mudge became the vice president of research and development and later chief scientist. In 2000, after the first crippling Internet distributed denial of service attacks, he was invited to meet with President Bill Clinton at a security summit alongside cabinet members and industry executives. In 2004 he became a division scientist at government contractor BBN Technologies, where he originally worked in the 1990s, and also joined the technical advisory board of NFR Security. In 2010, it was announced that he would be project manager of a DARPA project focused on directing research in cyber security. He was terminated by the company in January 2022, with Twitter claiming it was after "an assessment of how the organization was being led and the impact on top priority work". On 23 August 2022, the contents of a whistleblower complaint made by Zatko to the United States Congress were published. The complaint alleges Twitter committed multiple violations of United States securities regulations, the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, and a 2011 enforceable consent decree reached with the Federal Trade Commission after several issues between 2007 and 2010. He also accused Twitter of "extreme, egregious deficiencies" in its handling of user information and spam bots. Zatko accused several Twitter executives, including Parag Agrawal and certain board members, of making false or misleading statements about privacy, security, and content moderation on the platform in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 and SEC disclosure rules. These included misrepresentations to Elon Musk made during the course of his acquisition bid, with the complaint specifically calling Agrawal's May 16 thread deceptive. The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter reached a confidential $7million settlement with Zatko in June, following his firing. The settlement prohibits Zatko from speaking publicly about his time at Twitter or disparaging the company, with the exception of Congressional hearings and governmental whistleblower complaints.

On 11 August 2007 he married Sarah Lieberman, a co worker at BBN and former mathematician at the National Security Agency. Remarking about her husband’s time at Twitter in an article in Time Magazine, she said, "dishonesty is definitely something that frustrates him."