Twitter’s former head of cybersecurity accused the social media company of committing fraud and numerous “egregious” security violations in an explosive whistleblower complaint revealed Tuesday, shaking confidence in the much-maligned platform and sending its stock spiraling.
Peiter Zatko, a well-known hacker known as “Mudge” who worked at Twitter from 2020 until he was fired in January 2022, filed the complaint with the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission last month, first reported on by the Washington Post and CNN.
Zatko, who is represented by the legal group Whistleblower Aid, alleged in the complaint published by the Post that Twitter misled investors, users and the federal government.
Twitter intentionally undercounted the proportion of “bots” or fake and spam accounts on its platform by incentivizing executives to pursue a policy of “deliberate ignorance,” Zatko alleged, referencing Elon Musk’s ongoing attempt to walk away from his $44 billion purchase of the company over his insistence that more than 5% of Twitter accounts were bots like the company maintains.
Zatko claimed Twitter has made repeated “false and misleading statements” to the FTC about its user security and privacy measures, and that he refused Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s instruction to present “false and misleading” documents to the company’s board, leading to Zatko’s firing (a Twitter spokesperson attributed the dismissal to...
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