His former head of security Twitter accused the company of hiding security vulnerabilities and lying about working with fake user accountsagainst the backdrop of a giant’s legal battle with a billionaire businessman Elon Musk.

In an 84-page document addressed last month to the New York Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Competition Authority (FTC), Petr Zatko speaks of “serious and shocking weaknesses, willful ignorance, and threats to national security and democracy.”

Twitter, in a statement sent to AFP, assures that its priority is security and data protection. He also claimed that Zatko’s complaint was replete with “inconsistencies and inaccuracies.” He accuses his former boss of “adventurism” and claims that his goal is to “harm Twitter, its customers and shareholders.”

Zatko, in his complaint, talks about outdated servers and software vulnerable to cyberattacks, including, while he says that Twitter managers tried to hide from the US authorities and from the members of the company’s board of directors the cyberattack attempts that the platform received. He argues that these omissions expose the network to cyberattacks by foreign government entities seeking to undermine American national security.

Zatko also claims that the head of the company, Mr. Parag Agrawallied in a post in May that Twitter was doing its best to detect and remove fake user accounts.

The issue of these fake accounts is at the heart of Twitter’s legal battle with Elon Musk, who insists the company lowered their percentage, estimating that they do not exceed 5%.

Musk leans on this argument to justify his abandonment of the plan to acquire Twitter against $44 billion and not compensate the platform for violation of the agreement. One of Musk’s lawyers said that Zatko had already been asked to testify and that he considered it “strange” to fire an executive.

Zatko, a former hacker known as “Madge“, was fired in January due to “inadequate management and poor performance.” He was hired in late 2020 by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Mr. Jack Dorseyafter hacking the accounts of many celebrities (Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and others).

According to the newspaper Washington Post and television network CNNThe Senate Intelligence Committee wants to meet with Zatko to discuss his allegations.

The House Judiciary Committee has also shown interest in Zatko’s allegations.

“If the allegations are true, they could reveal data protection and security risks for Twitter users around the world,” the president of the commission said. Dick Durbin.