Twitter misled federal regulators about its defenses against hackers and spam accounts, according to a Twitter whistleblower.
The complaints were filed by Twitter’s ex-Security Head Peiter Zatko, who was a famed hacker more widely known as “Mudge”.
According to Zatko, he “witnessed senior executives engaging in deceitful and/or misleading communications affecting Board members, users and shareholders” on multiple occasions in 2021, during which CEO Parag Agrawal asked Zatko to provide false and misleading documents.
The 84-page complaint was filed last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, as well as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and also sent to congressional committees.
Zatko, who was fired as Twitter’s head of security earlier this year, said the company failed to accurately represent four key issues to the board: out-of-date software that lacked basic security measures, problems in who could access or control systems and data, problematic internal processes and a volume and frequency of security incidents impacting a large number of users’ data.
The complaints were filed by nonprofit law firm Whistleblower Aid, which is representing Zatko. The story was first reported by The Washington Post and CNN.
