Twitter accused of manipulation by its ex-security chief

Europe 1 with AFP 3:44 p.m., August 23, 2022, modified at 3:45 p.m., August 23, 2022

The former security chief of Twitter has accused the social network of hiding vulnerabilities in its protection system and lying about its fight against fake accounts, at the heart of a legal dispute between him and Elon Musk.

“Serious and shocking” failures

In an 84-page document sent last month to the US stock market regulator (SEC), the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the US competition authority (FTC), revealed on Tuesday by the Washington Post and CNN, Peiter Zatko denounces "serious and shocking failures, willful ignorance and threats to national security and democracy".

Twitter, in a press release sent to AFP, assured that security and data protection were among its priorities.

For the group, the complaint is "riddled with inconsistencies and vagueness". 

Lies around the fight against spam

The company also accused its former manager of opportunism aimed at "harming Twitter, its customers and its shareholders".

In the complaint, Mr. Zatko refers to obsolete servers, software vulnerable to computer attacks and claims that Twitter executives sought to hide the number of hacking attempts from US authorities as well as members of the board of directors.

He also claims that the company has consistently prioritized growing its user base over combating spam and bots.

Mr. Zatko notably describes as a lie a tweet published in May by the boss of the platform, Parag Agrawal, in which the leader assured that Twitter was doing everything to detect and remove spam as quickly as possible.

Elon Musk's proposed takeover of Twitter is abandoned

The issue of fake accounts is at the heart of the legal battle between Twitter and Elon Musk, the billionaire having repeatedly accused the company of minimizing the proportion of fake accounts and spam, estimated at 5% by the platform.

Mr. Musk is counting on this argument to justify the abandonment in early July of his plan to buy Twitter for $44 billion and avoid paying severance pay.

“We have already subpoenaed Mr. Zatko and find his dismissal and that of other key employees strange in light of what we have discovered,” Alex Spiro, one of Mr. Musk’s lawyers, said in a statement. an email sent to AFP.