‘Serious and shocking failures’: Twitter’s former security chief accused the social network of covering up vulnerabilities in its protection system and lying about its fight against fake accounts, according to a complaint revealed on Tuesday by the Washington Post and CNN.
In an 84-page document sent last month to the American stock exchange regulator (SEC), the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the American competition authority (FTC), Peiter Zatko denounces “serious deficiencies and shocking, willful ignorance and threats to national security and democracy”.
Twitter reacted in a press release, describing a complaint “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies” and ensuring that security and data protection were among its priorities. The company also denounces the opportunism of the former manager, who aims to “undermine Twitter, its customers and its shareholders”.
The issue of fake accounts at the heart of the battle against Elon Musk
Peiter Zatko talks about obsolete servers, software vulnerable to computer attacks and managers trying to hide the number of hacking attempts, both from American authorities and from members of the company’s board of directors. He also claims that Twitter prioritizes growing its number of users over the fight against spam and bots, and in particular describes as a lie a tweet published in May by the platform’s boss, Parag Agrawal, in which the leader assured that Twitter did everything to detect and remove spam as quickly as possible.
The issue of fake accounts is at the heart of the legal battle between Twitter and Elon Musk, the billionaire having repeatedly accused the company of minimizing the proportion of fake accounts and spam, estimated at 5% by the platform. Elon Musk is counting on this argument to justify the abandonment in early July of his plan to buy Twitter for $44 billion, and avoid paying severance pay.
Peiter Zatko, a former hacker
According to the Washington Post and CNN, the US Senate Intelligence Committee wants to speak with Peiter Zatko to discuss his charges.
Former hacker known by the nickname “Mudge”, Peiter Zatko was hired at the end of 2020 by the founder and former boss of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, after the accounts of many personalities (Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, etc). He was fired in January, due to “ineffective leadership and poor performance”, according to Twitter.