Twitter whistleblower raises security concerns

Picture Credit: Reuters Website

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, acquired Twitter in a historic $44 billion deal in less than three months. He remarked that the company had "tremendous potential."

Since then, Mr. Musk has changed his opinion. He criticized Twitter's top officials and started tweeting insults at the board of the business. He stated that he could not understand the problem because there were too many spam accounts on the social networking platform.

According to BBC, A former security head for Twitter has turned whistleblower and testified in court, that the firm deceived customers and US regulators about security flaws. Peiter Zatko, a well-known former hacker in the world of computer security, also asserted that Twitter miscalculated the number of fake and spam accounts that were present on its network. The allegations may have an impact on Twitter's legal dispute with billionaire Elon Musk, who is attempting to back out of a $44 billion acquisition deal with the business.

Twitter claims that Mr. Zatko's accusations are untrue and contradictory. In his startling findings, Mr. Zatko charged Twitter with breaching strict security procedures and "lying about bots to Elon Musk," which were first made public by CNN and The Washington Post. In July, he submitted his grievance to the Securities and Exchange Commission and also criticized Twitter's handling of private information and asserted that it had misreported some of these issues to US regulators.

Mr. Zatko claimed that "almost unmonitored" security concerns posed by individuals within the organization were known as ‘insider threats’ by claiming that too many workers had access to private networks and user information. He expressed his concern that there was no effective disaster recovery plan in place at the company and, Twitter had not properly deleted the data of users who had terminated their accounts.

Why did Musk get cold feet on Twitter?

Picture Credit: WION Website

Musk stated that executives at the software company had no motivation to accurately quantify the number of bogus and spam accounts on its platform, claiming that "Deliberate ignorance was the standard" in this regard.

The Tesla CEO's legal team is currently attempting to back out of the agreement by claiming that Twitter lacks the ability to confirm how many of its 229 million daily active users are indeed human.

According to Mr. Zatko's attorney, his client began the whistleblower procedure before the takeover proposal became known and had not gotten in touch with Elon Musk. Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Elon Musk, revealed to CNN that Mr. Zatko had been summoned as a potential witness.

A Twitter official said: “What we've seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data-security standards that is filled with contradictions and falsehoods and lacks crucial context,". Mr. Zatko's accusations and shrewd timing seem to be intended to garner attention and hurt Twitter, its users, and its stockholders.

According to Adam Sterling, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, "Twitter has an obligation to fight Musk on this, which they'd need to do because they have a fiduciary duty to do what's best for shareholders and salvage the deal. I predict that if the case goes to trial, a settlement will be reached that will let both parties preserve their reputations.”

September 2nd 2022| 05:30 PM