Former Twitter security head accuses CEO Parag Agrawal of lying

“The complaint from former head of security Peiter Zatko, a widely admired hacker known as “Mudge,” depicts Twitter as a chaotic and rudderless company beset by infighting, unable to properly protect its 238 million daily users including government agencies, heads of state and other influential public figures”, said the Washington Post report.

He also accuses Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal of “lying” when he said that the company was “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can”. In addition, the whistleblower alleges that he had warned his colleagues at Twitter about half of the company’s servers running out-of-date and vulnerable software. He goes on to say that the executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data. Instead, they presented directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes, he adds.

“Among the most serious accusations in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is that Twitter violated the terms of an 11-year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming that it had a solid security plan,” the report says.

In his complaint, Zatko also alleges the company prioritized user growth over reducing spam. He says that executives won individual bonuses of as much as $10 million tied to increases in daily users, but nothing explicitly for cutting spam.

Zatko filed the complaint last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, as well as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The complaint was also sent to congressional committees.

First article