A Twitter problems are piling up. In addition to the pending trial against Elon Musk, the platform now faces a complaint by former security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, in which he accuses the company’s management of misleading US regulators and its own board of directors by hiding the “extreme and egregious deficiencies” of its security system. securityas well as not doing enough to stop spam (spam).
The 84-page complaint was filed in July with the Securities Market Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice and has now been made known after leaking to the Washington Post. In the text, Zatko accuses Twitter of “lying” to the authorities by assuring that he had a solid security plan to deal with possible cyber attacks.
In reality, he denounces, half of the company’s servers were operating with outdated and vulnerable software, “terrible data” about the infractions committed on the platform were hidden and the private data of the 238 million daily users was unprotected. That allowed attacks against high-profile accounts such as those of former presidents Donald Trump y Barack Obamaas well as against Musk’s.
Limited efforts against spam
The document also alleges that the company prioritized continuing to grow the number of users over trying to reduce the proliferation of spam. Although the latter worsen the user experience, the Twitter board opted for the growth of its base, as this allowed them to earn millionaire bonuses, according to the Washington Post.
Zatko was hired in late 2020 by former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorseyand was fired last January by his successor, Parag Agrawal. Spokespersons for the platform have denied the accusations of their former head of security, assuring that the complaint is “riddled with inaccuracies” and accusing the leaker of being opportunistic.
The US authorities are studying the document presented by Zatko to determine to what extent Twitter’s cybersecurity was exposed and how this could have affected its users.
How does it affect the purchase of Musk?
The complaint may add fuel to the open judicial fire between Twitter and Musk. And it is that the tycoon at the head of companies such as Tesla or SpaceX withdrew his proposal to purchase the platform for 41,000 million euros – when they had already signed an agreement – with the argument that the number of automated accounts (bots) that the directive provided was not correct, a thesis that Zatko also supports.