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Two high-ranking senators on Monday demanded in a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal information about the company’s cybersecurity problems reported by its former security manager.
In the letter, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and Republican Chuck Grassley said the former employee’s allegations are highly troubling and ask him for accurate data on security practices within the company.
The letter was sent just a day before former Twitter security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday on the same subject.
According to Zatko, Twitter has serious cybersecurity problems, has lied to authorities about them, and has neither the ability nor the interest to determine the number of fake accounts on the social network.
According to inside information shared by Zatko, Twitter is a company with significant management concerns, which among other things allows too many employees to access its central controls and sensitive information without proper oversight.
In addition, he claims that one or more employees may be working for foreign intelligence services and alleges that company executives have lied to shareholders and regulators about the social network’s significant security deficiencies.
The complaint says egregious deficiencies, negligence, willful ignorance and threats to national security and democracy have been detected at the company.
Zatko also points out that Twitter does not properly delete data from users who terminate their accounts, in some cases because it has lost the information, and that it has misled regulators in this regard.
His report also refers to the issue of the bots that populate the social network and that are at the center of the trial that will pit Twitter and billionaire Elon Musk against each other, after the latter decided to cancel the purchase of the company, partly because he believes he has not told the truth about the number of fake accounts.
According to the former executive, Twitter does not have the resources to really know the number of bots and its top executives are not interested in getting them either.
Zatko worked at the company between November 2020 and January this year, when he was fired.
