A whistleblower has come forward and made some significant, shocking claims about security at the bird app, which should serve as further motivation for the executives of that flaming dumpster fire to get their house in order. As if Elon Musk’s battle with the censors and dunderheads at Twitter over the question of what proportion of the “users” of the platform are bots wasn’t sufficient to do so.
That would be Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko. According to ZeroHedge, he’s alleging that Twitter deceived the feds in regards to its efforts to combat hackers. So, if he’s telling the truth and Elon’s claim is at all real, that means that Twitter lied to the feds, public, and shareholders not just about what percentage of its users are fake, spam bots, but also about a potentially even more important topic given the large number of prominent individuals that use Twitter: cybersecurity.
ZeroHedge, reporting on what it is that Peiter Zatko is alleging, reports that::
One day after Elon Musk’s legal team subpoenaed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as part of an ongoing effort to fight a lawsuit by the social media company to force the billionaire to move forward with the $44 billion acquisition deal. The Washington Post released a new report alleging executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s board about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” to combat hackers.
WaPo cited a whistleblower complaint from the former head of security Peiter Zatko who said some of the company’s servers are running out-of-date software, and executives withheld critical information about data breaches. Bezo’s news outlet interviewed more than a dozen current and former employees about past deficiencies.
The complaint was filed last month with the SEC, DoJ, and FTC. It said thousands of employees had access to core company software, which led to data breaches and hacks of high-profile users.
Oh, and that’s not all the bad news for Twitter coming from Zatko. He also added some color to Musk’s bot claims, with the whistleblower document claiming that Twitter executives prioritized user growth over reducing spam.
Twitter’s management appears to have at least somewhat freaked out about the whistleblower claims, with CEO Parag Agrawal sending out this message to Twitter staff as Twitter spokespeople tried to push back on the whistleblower allegations:
There are news reports outlining claims about Twitter’s privacy, security, and data protection practices that were made by Mudge Zatko, a former Twitter executive who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance. We are reviewing the redacted claims that have been published, but what we’ve seen so far is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context.
I know this is frustrating and confusing to read, given Mudge was accountable for many aspects of this work that he is now inaccurately portraying more than six months after his termination. But none of this takes away from the important work you have done and continue to do to safeguard the privacy and security of our customers and their data. This year alone, we have meaningfully accelerated our progress through increased focus and incredible leadership from Lea Kissner, Damien Kieran, and Nick Caldwell. This work continues to be an important priority for us, and if you want to read more about our approach, you can find a summary here.
Given the spotlight on Twitter at the moment, we can assume that we will continue to see more headlines in the coming days — this will only make our work harder. I know that all of you take a lot of pride in the work we do together and in the values that guide us. We will pursue all paths to defend our integrity as a company and set the record straight.
Musk’s legal team is reportedly looking in to having Zatko testify.
We’ll see where this goes. For now, however, it doesn’t look good in the least for Twitter.
I will tend to believe the whistleblower over Twitter just based on my personal experience with the bird app…