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A former security head at Twitter, now a whistleblower, testified in court that the corporation deceived customers and US regulators about security flaws.
Peiter Zatko asserted that Twitter miscalculated the number of phony and spam accounts on its network.
The allegations may have an impact on Twitter’s legal dispute with billionaire Elon Musk, who is attempting to back out of a $44 billion (£37 billion) purchase agreement for the business.
Twitter claims that Mr. Zatko’s accusations are untrue and contradictory.
According to the report, he was let go in January due to poor performance and incompetent leadership.
He charged Twitter with not upholding strict security procedures and “lying about bots to Elon Musk” in his damaging disclosures, which were originally made public by CNN and The Washington Post.
In July, he submitted his complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A redacted version of the complaint was made available to the BBC through CBS news.
Mr. Zatko further attacked Twitter’s handling of private data and asserted that it misreported some of these issues to US regulators.
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kanye West have all been targets of high-profile Twitter attacks.
Among his worries, Mr. Zatko claims that Twitter experienced an unusually high number of security problems – “about one security event per week serious enough that Twitter was obligated to report it to regulators.”
He claimed that so-called insider threats, or security dangers posed by employees with bad intentions, were “essentially unmonitored.”
The former security head expressed his concern about how Twitter handled data, claiming that too many workers had access to private networks and user information.
He expressed concern that the corporation lacked a practical disaster recovery plan and asserted that in the past, Twitter has failed to destroy the data of users who terminated their accounts properly.
In regards to bogus and spam accounts, he said that “deliberate ignorance was the norm” in the software business and accused Twitter management of having no motivation to tally the number of such accounts on its site accurately.
According to The Washington Post, he ” provides little evidence” to support his claims.
Musk v. twitter in light of this revelation
But Elon Musk’s legal team has already reacted to the remarks. His legal team claims Twitter cannot confirm how many of its 229 million daily active users were human in an effort to get the Tesla CEO out of the arrangement.
Read Also: Jack Dorsey a subject of Elon Musk’s subpoena
Following the release of Mr. Zatko’s discoveries, Mr. Musk tweeted screenshots of the article from The Washington Post along with a graphic that said, “give a small whistle.”
According to Mr. Zatko’s attorney, who spoke to CNN, his client initiated the whistleblowing procedure before the takeover proposal became known and had not gotten in touch with Elon Musk.
Alex Spiro, a representative for Elon Musk, revealed to CNN that Mr. Zatko had been subpoenaed as a potential witness.
Peiter Zatko, a former hacker, is a well-known name in the world of computer security.
He went by the moniker Mudge and was a member of the L0pht (pronounced “loft”) computer security think tank. In 1998, he participated in congressional hearings on cyber-security.
Additionally, he has held executive positions at Google and DARPA, a research and development organization run by the US government.
