The company’s executive team allegedly instructed Zatko to provide an oral report of his initial findings on the company’s security condition to the board rather than a detailed written account, ordered Zatko to knowingly present cherry-picked and misrepresented data to create the false perception of progress on urgent cybersecurity issues, and went behind Zatko’s back to have a third-party consulting firm’s report scrubbed to hide the true extent of the company’s problems.
#OPENING AN ACCOUNT IN THE SITE WHISTLE PHONE FULL#
According to the disclosure, Agrawal and his lieutenants repeatedly discouraged Zatko from providing a full accounting of Twitter’s security problems to the company’s board of directors. Some of Zatko’s most damning claims spring from his apparently tense relationship with Parag Agrawal, the company’s former chief technology officer who was made CEO after Jack Dorsey stepped down last November. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be.” Zatko’s allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. “What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance,” the Twitter spokesperson said.
Twitter declined to say whether it typically completes the process. Twitter also said the company provides clear tools for users to control privacy, ad targeting and data sharing, and added 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. In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN that security and privacy are both longtime priorities for the company. Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”ĬNN sought comment from Twitter on more than 50 specific questions regarding the disclosure. John Tye, founder of Whistleblower Aid and Zatko’s lawyer, told CNN that Zatko has not been in contact with Musk, and said Zatko began the whistleblower process before there was any indication of Musk’s involvement with Twitter.Īfter this article was initially published, Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, told CNN, “We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko is being represented by Whistleblower Aid, the same group that represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. (TWTR) fix years of technical shortcomings and alleged non-compliance with an earlier privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission. According to Zatko, his public whistleblowing comes after he attempted to flag the security lapses to Twitter (TWTR) in January for what the company claims was poor performance. Bots have recently become central to Elon Musk’s attempts to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the company (although Twitter denies Musk’s claims). The whistleblower also says Twitter executives don’t have the resources to fully understand the true number of bots on the platform, and were not motivated to. The whistleblower also alleges Twitter does not reliably delete users’ data after they cancel their accounts, in some cases because the company has lost track of the information, and that it has misled regulators about whether it deletes the data as it is required to do. Zatko further alleges that Twitter’s leadership has misled its own board and government regulators about its security vulnerabilities, including some that could allegedly open the door to foreign spying or manipulation, hacking and disinformation campaigns.
The whistleblower, who has agreed to be publicly identified, is Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who was previously the company’s head of security, reporting directly to the CEO. It also alleges that some of the company’s senior-most executives have been trying to cover up Twitter’s serious vulnerabilities, and that one or more current employees may be working for a foreign intelligence service. The disclosure, sent last month to Congress and federal agencies, paints a picture of a chaotic and reckless environment at a mismanaged company that allows too many of its staff access to the platform’s central controls and most sensitive information without adequate oversight. Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users’ personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post.
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