Twitter’s former security chief, Peiter Zatko, has released an 84-page whistleblower complaint disclosing the lapses of the social media company, including its misinformation about bot accounts.
The board of directors and regulators were misinformed by Twitter executives, according to Zatko, who was fired in January for poor performance, and the company has insufficient security in its servers and software.
The whistleblower’s statement was made at the same time that Elon Musk and Twitter are at odds over user data related to bot accounts, which the company claims are less than 5% of all accounts but the billionaire claims it’s higher.
Musk had pulled out of the deal on the basis of Twitter misinforming the market on the level of spam accounts, while also faulting the firm of breaching contractual agreement – Twitter denied both claims.
With the court trial regarding the completion of the $44 billion acquisition deal almost two months away, Zatko’s claims could create a huge blow for the social networking company during its faceoff with Musk at the Delaware Court on October 17.
Zatko, who happens to be a famous hacker, said the flaw in Twitter’s server and software security could result into hacking, disinformation campaigns by bad actors, and foreign espionage.
He said Twitter doesn’t have necessary resources to understand the bot problem facing the company, so there’s no motivation to comprehend it. However, Twitter Chief Executive, Parag Agrawal, told employees that some of Zatko’s claims are false, inaccurate and baseless.
This was contained in a memo, which reads, “We are reviewing the redacted claims that have been published but what we have seen so far is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context.” Agrawal told employees.
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