(New York) The former security chief of Twitter has 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.
Posted at 8:30 a.m.
In an 84-page document sent last month to the American stock market 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 sent to AFP, describing a complaint “full of 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”.
Mr. Zatko points to obsolete servers, software vulnerable to cyberattacks and executives seeking to hide the number of hacking attempts, both from US authorities and from members of the company’s board of directors.
He also claims that Twitter prioritizes growing its user base over combating spam and bots.
Mr. Zatko notably describes as a lie a tweet published in May by the boss of the platform, Parag Agrawal, in which the leader assured that Twitter was doing 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.
Mr. 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.
According to washington post and CNN, the US Senate Intelligence Committee wants to speak with Mr. 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.