His former head of security Twitter accused the company of hiding security vulnerabilities and lying about dealing with fake user accountsin the middle of legal of the giant’s dispute with the billionaire businessman Elon Musk.
In a 84 page document, addressed last month to the New York Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Competition Authority (FTC), Peter Zatko talks about “serious and shocking weaknessesfor willful ignorance and threats to national security and democracy.”
Twitter, in a statement sent to AFP and relayed by the Athens News Agency, assures that its priority is security and data protection. He also argued that Zatko’s complaint is rampant “inconsistencies and inaccuracies”. She accuses her former executive of “opportunism” and claims that his goal is “to hurt Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.”
Zatko’s complaint
In his complaint, Zatko mentions, among other things, outdated servers and software vulnerability in cyber attacks, while he says that Twitter managers tried to hide from US authorities and company board members the cyberattack attempts the platform received. Those omissions expose the network to cyberattacks by foreign, state actors seeking to undermine American national security, he argues.
Zatko also alleges that the company’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, lied in a post in May in which he assured that Twitter makes every effort to detect and delete fake user accounts. The issue of these fake accounts is at the heart of Twitter’s legal battle with Elon Musk, who insists the company was understating their percentage, estimating they were no more than 5%. Musk is relying on this argument to justify backing out of his plan to buy Twitter for $44 billion and not pay the platform damages for breach of contract. One of Musk’s lawyers said Zatko has already been asked to testify and found it “strange” to fire the executive.
Zatko, a former hacker known by the nickname “Mudge“, was fired in January due to “poor leadership and poor performance». He was hired in late 2020 by the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, after the hacking of the accounts of many celebrities (Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and others).
According to the Washington Post and CNN, the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to meet with Zatko to discuss his allegations. The Judicial Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives also expressed interest in the accusations launched by Zatko. “If true, the allegations may reveal risks to the data protection and security of Twitter users around the world,” Commission Chairman Dick Durbin said.
Source: News Beast
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