Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to reports in the morning of September 14, Beijing time, the former head of security at Twitter accused the leadership of the social media company of "focusing on profit over safety", providing an important excuse for Elon Musk to abandon the purchase of Twitter.

Peiter Zatko told a hearing on the US Senate Judiciary Committee that Twitter "has been lagging behind industry safety standards for more than a decade". His testimony led to close scrutiny of the social media company's cyber security measures and could have a significant impact on the $44 billion Twitter v. Musk breach case.

Mr Zatek was sacked by Twitter in January and filed a whistle-blower with the US government in early July, accusing the company's executives of "misleading the public, lawmakers and regulators and even their own boards" about security measures.

He told US lawmakers that the security loophole in Twitter was so serious that it even threatened the national security of the United States.

The charges are good for Musk, co-founder of Tesla, who is suing Twitter, asking the court to allow it to abandon its $44 billion acquisition of the social media company. Mr Musk said the company underestimated the number of robot accounts on their platform and misled regulators on the issue.

Preliminary results show that Twitter shareholders voted to approve Musk's acquisition on Tuesday local time.

Us Senator Charles Grassley (Charles Grassley) said in a public statement that Twitter CEO Palag Agrawal (Parag Agrawal) refused to attend the hearing, which he thought would "pose a threat to litigation". He added: "if these allegations are true, I don't think Agrawal can keep his job at Twitter."

"Today's hearing only shows that Zatek's allegations are inconsistent and inaccurate." A spokesman for Twitter said.

At this wide-ranging hearing, Zatek, who once held senior cyber security positions at Google and the US Department of Defense, said that although Twitter has experienced various crises, it has failed to resolve cyber security vulnerabilities.

Employees do not know what data they have or where it is stored, but "have too much access to too much data", he says. He estimates that thousands of Twitter employees have access to sensitive data from users and advertisers.

He said he and other Twitter employees had raised issues internally, but executives misled regulators about compliance through a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The agreement at the time required Twitter to strengthen privacy and security measures.

"the key people in the leadership do not have the ability to fully understand the problem, but more importantly, the company's incentive mechanism allows them to value profit over safety." Zatek said.

Mr Zatek said it was difficult for Twitter to record and track suspicious activity on the platform. "they lack the basic ability to track foreign intelligence agencies to drive them out on their own," he said. " He added that thousands of failed internal system visits were recorded every week, but no one noticed the problem.

Zatak also alleges that Twitter, under pressure from the Indian government, inserted its agents inside the company.

Twitter lawyers said last week that Mr Zuckert raised these concerns with executives in 2022, arguing that the company misled the risk committee on cyber security issues. Twitter said it conducted an internal investigation into these issues but found that "these concerns are unfounded".

A spokesman for Twitter said that the company's recruitment process is completely independent and independent of foreign governments, and that they also have adequate control and detection systems to protect data security.

Zatek's charges are likely to play an important role in the Twitter v. Musk breach case in October.

A Delaware judge agreed last week to take Zatek's charges into consideration in Musk's lawsuit. Before that, Mr Musk's team had said that if the allegations were true, it would constitute a new reason to cancel the deal. Musk's team also issued a subpoena to Zatek in the hope that he can testify in court in October.

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