Zatko, a former hacker known by the nickname “Mudge,” was fired in January due to “inadequate leadership and poor performance.”
His former head of security Twitter accused the company of hiding security vulnerabilities and lying about its handling of fake user accounts amid the giant’s legal battle with the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
In an 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 speaks of “serious and shocking weaknesses, for willful ignorance and threats to national security and democracy”.
Twitter, in a statement sent to AFP, assures that its priority is security and data protection. He also argued that Zatko’s complaint is riddled with “inconsistencies and inaccuracies.” It accuses its former executive of “opportunism” and claims that his goal is “to hurt Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.”
THE Zatko In his complaint, he talks among other things about outdated servers and software vulnerable to cyberattacks, while he says that Twitter managers tried to hide from the US authorities and from members of the company’s board of directors the cyberattack attempts that the platform received. Those omissions expose the network to cyberattacks by foreign, state actors seeking to undermine American national security, he argues.
Zatko also claims that the head of the company, Mr Parag Agrawal, lied in a post in May that Twitter was doing everything it could to uncover 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 “inadequate 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 newspaper Washington Post and the television network CNN, the Senate Intelligence Committee he wants to meet with Zatko to discuss his complaints. 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.
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