The famous researcher Charlie Miller announced early on Tuesday that he is leaving the security team of the social media giant Twitter.
The announcement — made on Twitter, of course — reveals only that Miller will be stepping down effective Friday.
After 3 years I’m stepping down from protecting the tweets, effective Friday. Good times, great coworkers, time to move on. Be free, tweets!
— Charlie Miller (@0xcharlie) August 24, 2015
The security expert, hired by Twitter in September 2012, hasn’t said why he is leaving the company, or what he plans on doing next. However, considering that his latest research focused on hacking connected vehicles, some speculate that he might have been recruited by a car maker.
A few years ago, Miller was best known for finding critical zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple products. The researcher, who spent five years working for the NSA, made a lot of headlines in 2011 after he publicly disclosed a flaw in Apple’s App Store, and Apple responded by revoking his developer license.
More recently, Miller made the news after hacking cars with Chris Valasek, director of vehicle security research for IOActive. Miller joined IOActive’s advisory board in December 2014.
Miller and Valasek started hacking cars in 2013 when they took control of numerous functions on a Toyota Prius. This year, they demonstrated that automobiles can also be hacked remotely when they hijacked a Jeep through Fiat Chrysler’s Uconnect feature. The experts managed to kill the engine, turn on the air conditioning, hijack the infotainment system, track the vehicle via GPS, disable the brakes, and even take control of the steering.
The demonstration led the car maker to recall 1.4 million vehicles in order to update their software.
While it’s unclear where Miller is going next, one thing is certain: he is not going back to the NSA.
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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