Twitter’s former head of security dropped bombshells in an interview with CNN earlier this week, making allegations about the platform that will have major implications moving forward.
In his interview, Peiter Zatko, once among the world’s best hackers known as “Mudge” and who was personally hired by Twitter founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey, noted that the current operations team has not been upfront with billionaire Elon Musk regarding the real number of fake and bot accounts on the platform.
What’s more, the Silicon Valley figure who was fired in January by Twitter also said that security on the platform is so bad it has become a huge risk to U.S. national security.
“Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter for poor performance and ineffective leadership over six months ago. While we haven’t had access to the specific allegations being referenced, what we’ve seen so far is a narrative about our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and lacks important context,” a Twitter spokesperson told CNN in response to Zatko’s allegations.
Musk has been saying for months that Twitter officials were lying to him about the real number of fake bot and spam accounts on the platform which led to his backing out of a $44 billion offer to purchase the company earlier this year. In order to force him to complete the deal, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink, leading him to countersue in order to force Twitter to reveal the real bot numbers.