A former Twitter executive caused a stir on Tuesday, August 23, by publishing an 84-page document containing revelations on numerous topics on the social network. Peiter Zatko, a former head of security, stepped down last January. Among these revelations, transmitted to the US Congress in July and broadcast by the US channel CNN and the Washington PostSeveral themes arise.
Upon joining Twitter in 2020, Zatko says he found many security issues at the company. His statements describe “serious deficiencies, negligence, willful omission, and threats to national security and democracy.” According to him, it is “impossible to protect the production environment”. A large number of social media engineers have virtually unlimited access to company data and controls. “There is no tracking, no connection history, and no changes,” the report says.
In response, Twitter said its engineers could access the production system “if they have specific tasks that warrant it.” The company has not commented on the lack of server hardware and security. Furthermore, Zatko accuses Twitter of having willfully disclosed a series of hacking attempts on the platform, related to these security deficiencies, to its own board of directors, but also to US authorities.
On the hunt for fake accounts
The false accounts, or “bots”, are at the center of the lawsuit that Elon Musk will oppose to the social network for the takeover of the company by the billionaire, finally canceled by the latter. Its exact number is subject to debate between the two parties and could have a financial weight on the real value of the company.
According to Zatko, the executive inside Twitter does not have the resources to judge the exact number of these fake accounts, but neither does he have the will, because the real number could damage the company’s value and image.
The former employee began asking about fake accounts in early 2021. It was during this period that the site’s integrity manager told him that the company does not know the exact number of fake accounts on its platform and uses deliberately deceptive practices to calculate it. In response, Twitter told CNN that the claim that the exact number of fake accounts was not known “is without context.”
On foreign threats
The report says that the US government has told Twitter that at least one of its employees, if not more, has worked for the intelligence services of another country. Earlier in August, a former company executive was also accused of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia.
About personal data
Zatko states in its report that the social network does not delete, as required by law, the personal data of users once they have deleted their account, especially since the company simply lost track of these in most cases. data.
About the FTC complaint in 2011
In 2010, the US Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint against Twitter for its mismanagement of users’ personal data and giving engineers too easy access to the social network’s main controls.
Peiter Zatko says the company “never complied” with FTC requests for a decade. The result, according to the former employee, is an “abnormally high incident rate.”
This charge is serious. If confirmed, Twitter could be fined billions of dollars by the FTC, as a result of actions the company has never taken since the complaint in 2011.
All these accusations by Peiter Zatko are now in the hands of the US Congress, which is examining them. The decision of the authorities in the face of these revelations could change the future of the social network, already largely initiated by its lawsuit against the billionaire Elon Musk.
Source: BFM TV
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