WASHINGTON: A former security chief at Twitter told Congress on Tuesday that the social platform is plagued by weak cyber defences, privacy threats and the inability to control millions of fake accounts.
Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, a respected cybersecurity expert, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to lay out his allegations.
"Twitter's misleading the public, lawmakers, and regulators, Zatko said as he began his sworn testimony. The platform is "over a decade behind the industry's best standard," he said.
"This is a big deal for all of us. It doesn't matter who has keys if there are no locks," Zatko said. Zatko was the head of security for the influential platform until he was fired early this year.
He filed a whistleblower complaint in July with Congress, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Among his most serious accusations is that Twitter violated the terms of a 2011 FTC settlement by falsely claiming that it had put stronger measures in place to protect the security and privacy of its users.
Senators are clearly alarmed. Sen Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee, said Zatko has detailed flaws —that may pose a direct threat to Twitter's hundreds of millions of users as well as to American democracy.
"Twitter is an immensely powerful platform and can't afford gaping vulnerabilities," he said.
Zatko's claims could also affect Tesla billionaire Elon Musk's attempt to back out of his $44 billion deal to acquire the social platform.
Musk claims that Twitter has long underreported spam bots on its platform and cites that as a reason to nix the deal he struck in April. Many of Zatko's claims are uncorroborated and appear to have little documentary support.
Twitter has called Zatko's description of events "a false narrative riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies" and lacking important context.
Zatko also accuses the company of deception in its handling of automated "spam bots," or fake accounts.
That allegation is at the core of billionaire tycoon Elon Musk's attempt to back out of his USD 44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Musk and Twitter are locked in a bitter legal battle, with Twitter having sued Musk to force him to complete the deal.
The Delaware judge overseeing the case ruled last week that Musk can include new evidence related to Zatko's allegations in the high-stakes trial, which is set to start Oct 17.
Sen Charles Grassley, the committee's ranking Republican, said Tuesday that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal declined to testify at the hearing, citing the ongoing legal proceedings with Musk.
But the hearing is "more important than Twitter's civil litigation in Delaware," Grassley said.
Zatko, 51, first gained prominence in the 1990s as an ethical hacker and later worked in senior positions at an elite Defence Department research unit and at Google. He joined Twitter in late 2020 at the urging of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.