Twitter’s former head of cybersecurity has accused the social media company of a number of security flaws and oversights, according to a whistleblower complaint filed with the American government this year.
Peiter Zatko, an expert cybersecurity technician who is widely respected in the industry, filed the complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice in July. Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to whistleblowers, confirmed the complaint’s existence.
Moreover, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal fired Zatko and another top security official in a shakeup of that department in January.
The complaint are not a good sign and they comes in at a particularly time for Twitter, which is fighting in court to ensure that Tesla CEO and richest man on Earth Elon Musk goes through with a deal to purchase Twitter for more than $44 billion. Musk is trying to pull out his decision of getting his hands on Twitter. Musk’s legal argument rests on alleging Twitter misled investors about its product, including how well it fights fake accounts.
Now, the Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation has tweeted in the same context on her twitter handle, “Twitter has a long history of hiring talented security people with dazzling reputations and then sidelining them and ignoring their recommendations. Just sayin'”.
