By Donie O’Sullivan, Clare Duffy and Brian Fung | CNN Business
Zatko was fired by Twitter in January for what the company claims was poor performance. According to Zatko, his public whistleblowing comes after he attempted to flag the security lapses to Twitter’s board and to help Twitter fix years of technical shortcomings and alleged non-compliance with an earlierwith the Federal Trade Commission. Zatko is being represented by Whistleblower Aid, the same group that represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Some of Zatko’s most damning claims spring from his apparently tense relationship with Parag Agrawal, the company’s former chief technology officer whoafter Jack Dorsey stepped down last November. According to the disclosure, Agrawal and his lieutenants repeatedly discouraged Zatko from providing a full accounting of Twitter’s security problems to the company’s board of directors.
The scathing disclosure, which totals around 200 pages, including supporting exhibits — was sent last month to a number of US government agencies and congressional committees, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. The existence and details of the disclosure have not previously been reported. CNN obtained a copy of the disclosure from a senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill.
“All my life, I’ve been about finding places where I can go and make a difference. I’ve done that through the security field. That’s my main lever,” he told CNN in an interview earlier this month.a devastating hack