An internal complaint has been made that Twitter deceived federal regulators on cyber security and privacy protection. The revelation began with former Twitter security chief Peter Zatko, who filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Justice Department, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) through the nonprofit law firm Whistleblower Aid last month.
In the complaint, Zatko said Twitter made a false report to federal authorities. Twitter claimed to the authorities that it has strong security measures for hackers and spam accounts, but in reality, half of the servers are outdated equipment.
Meanwhile, the internal charges came as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter filed a court case. As a result, it is analyzed that Zatko’a disclosure will empower Musk.
On the 8th of last month, when Musk notified Twitter of the cancellation of the $44 billion acquisition contract, citing a fake account problem, Twitter immediately filed a lawsuit with the Delaware court demanding the implementation of the contract.
Both sides began the lawsuit when Musk broke the Twitter acquisition contract, saying, “Twitter does not properly disclose data on fake accounts.” In fact, Musk’s lawyers reportedly sent a subpoena to Zatko when the revelation was made.
In particular, he revealed that senior executives, including CEO Agrawal, deliberately reduced and counted the number of fake accounts on Twitter.
“He was fired for his inefficient leadership and poor performance,” a Twitter spokesman said. “His claims are inconsistent and inaccurate.”
Due to such revelations, Twitter’s stock price plunged 7.32 percent from the previous trading day to $39.86.
Meanwhile, former hacker Jatko is a veteran who has been a prominent computer security researcher for decades. He was a member of the Boston Cybersecurity Group, which became famous in 1998 when he testified before the U.S. Senate for warning about the state of national cybersecurity.
