The whistleblower Peiter Zatko criticized his ex-employer in front of the American Senate, a month before the trial on the aborted buyout of the social network by the founder of Tesla.
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“I am here today because Twitter’s management deceives the public.” Tuesday, September 13, in front of the American senators, Peer Zatko, known as “Mudge”, the former security official of the social network has portrayed A company “of which he always wants success”, but whose management endangers all its users. The ex-employee who became a whistleblower returned to the accusations contained in the file he transmitted, in August, to several American regulators and elected officials.
pell -mell, Mr. Zatko, a famous figure in the American hacker environment, returned to the presence – proven in certain cases – of secret agents or employees of intelligence agencies among the employees of the company; on the obsolescence of the technical infrastructure of the social network, “late for ten years”; On the possibility for thousands of employees to access user data; Or on the absence of basic safety tools, such as recording attempts to connection to Twitter tools.
More generally, Mr. Zatko described a company where engineers do their best to correct the problems, but without support or even understanding management. “Key members of management do not have the skills to understand the extent of the problem,” said Zatko. “And they have no incitement to do it. As the writer Upton Sinclair said, it is extremely difficult to make someone understand something if his salary depends on the fact that he does not understand it” , he added, considering Twitter “Mû only by the search for profit”.
a boon for Elon Musk
By chance of the calendar, the hearing of “Mudge” has a particular weight because it falls in the middle of a battle between Elon Musk and Twitter. This relentless indictment abested the image of the management of Twitter and the founder of Tesla obtained the right to include it in his legal argument during the trial which must be held before the court of Delaware, in the United States, on October 17 . Slacing the dispute in court now seems the only way out since Tuesday, September 13, the shareholders of Twitter voted in favor of the public buyout offer of $ 44 billion formulated in April by Elon Musk.
Mr. Zatko’s offensive is a boon for Mr. Musk: Among the 84 pages of reproaches transmitted to the American authorities, the ex-employee formulates a criticism used by the American businessman as the main reason To withdraw its redemption offer in early July: the Twitter management would underestimate the number of “non-human” accounts, when it advances the figure of 5 % of automatic accounts. This explanation is not unanimous, however: for some, it is rather financial assembly problems, due to the drop in the stock market price of his Tesla company, which prompted Mr. Musk to cancel his offer.
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