Another whistleblower has declared on a war on one of the tech giants, and this time it's Twitter.
Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, has disclosed documents exclusively to CNN and The Washington Post; alleging that "Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy".
Zatko has alleged that some of the tech giant's executives jeopardized national security through "egregious deficiencies" in privacy and security, and systematically misled users, members of its board, investors, and government officials about those vulnerabilities.
It's worth noting that Zatko is a renowned hacker, and one of the United States’ top cybersecurity experts. He served as Twitter’s head of security from Nov. 2020 to Jan. 2022.
In January 2022, Zatko was fired by CEO Parag Agrawal who claimed that the whistleblower was fired due to "poor performance and leadership". However, Zatko claims that the reason behind his discharge was his documentation of what he says were repeated security violations, and as he worked with the company’s compliance officer on a formal investigation based on his claims.
Earlier in July, Zatko submitted his disclosures to U.S. regulatory agencies, according to the CNN.
In Zatko's disclosures, the whistleblower accuses Twitter executives of "lying about bots" to Elon Musk, shareholders and Twitter users, claiming that the platform has far more bots than what it shares with the public, and that executives are not willing to count them accurately because that would negatively affect their bonuses.
To defend its image and reputation, Twitter shared a statement with CNN telling the media outlet that "security and privacy are both longtime priorities for the company".
The company also said that it "provides clear tools for users to control privacy, ad targeting and data sharing". It also mentioned that it "has created internal workflows to ensure users know that when they cancel their accounts, Twitter will deactivate the accounts and start a deletion process".
It's expected that these new allegations might affect Musk's deal with Twitter negatively.
