Twitter is under fire after a new whistleblower is alleging that
the social network has quote extreme egregious deficiencies in its
cyber security defense. The new complaint says Twitter is an easy
target for hackers and could put users information at risk. Stephanie
Sai tells us more
Now The whistleblower is a former head of security at Twitter and
was previously a renowned hacker himself known as much now lawmakers
on Capitol Hill are looking into Peter Zach owes claims among many
other serious allegations. Acco says the company misled regulators
about its ability and efforts to get rid of fake or spam accounts
claim that could help Elon Musk who is trying to back out of a deal
to buy the company for $44 billion with more. I'm joined by a
Elizabeth Dwoskin, Silicon Valley correspondent for the Washington
Post. Who helped break this story, Elizabeth Thanks so much for joining
us, we've talked often about Twitter security problems over the years.
But what Zaka was alleging here is deception lies to government regulators,
the media and users. Can you just boil down for us? Just a couple
of the most egregious allegations here and tell us why people should
be concerned?
Yeah, These are explosive claims that could be incredibly damaging
to Twitter. You're absolutely right. That Twitter's had security
issues over the years, the security disaster many would say, But
now we have, um Peter, Peter, Zach Oh, much alleging that they were
lying to the board. They were lying to investors. They were lying
to their regulators. And these are huge allegations. He says that
too many employees had access to internal companies systems that
That the security was so bad that Twitter was literally on the brink
of shutdown that they didn't delete data that they claimed that they
deleted that he tried to present contrary information to the board
and was prevented by the CEO. And one thing when you think about
okay, why does the average person care Because not everyone is on
Twitter? Twitter is incredible, incredibly influential platform because
it has politicians. It has influencers.
Public figures. And what happens on Twitter can sway the stock price
of companies it can cause national security alerts. Imagine if someone
saw on Twitter there's a bomb at the White House that that would
cause the public to go into a panic. And so if Twitter security,
as much alleges is this week, as he alleges, then you have this exposure.
To a bad actors that can then influence the public discourse. Whether
it's in politics, the future of companies or security that the public
the public safety
There are also some very serious claims about foreign influence Elizabeth,
including that Twitter knowingly hired an agent who worked for the
government of India, who had quote direct unsupervised access to
the company's systems and user data.
If that is true, this seems to be about much more than the security
of the average Twitter users account info or even about the reliability
of the platform.
Yeah, this that is the most salacious and troubling allegation in
the complaint, and it's actually one that is that was the hardest
for us to substantiate because a lot of the complaint is redacted.
And we believe that that the India stuff is the redacted stuff. About
last year, a Twitter was required by the Indian government actually
to hire two executives that would report directly to the government
of India. All tech companies were
And Twitter's pushback is that this is what much is referring to,
But we have sourcing that says that potentially there was another
government agent. But again, we don't It was the weakest part of
the complaint because so much was redacted. For its part. Twitter
also says they fired Peter Zach. Oh, for quote, ineffective leadership
and poor performance.
And they called the timing of these allegations. Opportunistic. What
other explanations? Are you getting Elizabeth from the company and
hearing from employees. One of the things that I've heard from a
lot of employees is that despite
Much being a famous hacker when he came into Twitter. He had this
arrogant attitude where he was, um, basically acted like he knew
things about subjects that were outside of his expertise. One of
the most interesting examples, I think in the complaint and that
comes from my reporting as well.
Is related to this claim that he makes that Twitter was lying to
Elon Musk about spam inbox. He literally says Twitter's lying in
the complaint and one of the things he says, for example, that he
couldn't get a straight answer from anyone at Twitter about the prevalence
of spam on the platform, he says, he asked and asked and couldn't
get an answer. But my own reporting, including document I reviewed
from Twitter shows that actually, Twitter does have an internal number
called spam prevalence, and it was presented at a board meeting that
much attended.
So maybe he didn't like that number didn't believe in the number.
Maybe he dismissed it. I feel like the truth Here is somewhere in
between. And you mentioned Ellen Must. The timing does seem opportune
for Mr Musk because some of the claims deal directly with this problem
of spam and fake accounts, which must has cited as a reason.
For withdrawing his bid to buy the company. How could this case help
him or this testimony? I guess, help him in his trial, which begins
soon.
Yeah, As I said, I feel like this entire complaint was a big call
to Elon Musk to subpoena me deposed me And actually, what we saw
today is that Elon's team is going to be deposing him. Now. I think
that even if all the claims don't turn out to be accurate, I think
this could open up a Pandora's box in the Elon Musk case, the trials,
you know, set to happen if it doesn't settle in October. It's very
soon. There's a hearing tomorrow.
And what we think is that there's already been this fight over discovery
and data. Who's going to get access, for example, to whether Elon's
team is going to get access to internal records of Twitter executives?
Well, you can see that something like this gives them huge leverage
to say Wait. We actually need more executives. We need to find out
what's going on. I think it even goes beyond the spam inbox issue
that Ellen has been consistently raising.
I had a whole can of worms for Twitter users as well. Elizabeth Dwoskin
with the Washington Post. Thank you for joining the news hour, as
always.