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　　Musk wanted to sleep, and someone offered a pillow.

　　For the world's richest man, Peiter Zakto's whistleblower was a good signal to get him out of the legal battle. Previously, he tried to buy Twitter for $44 billion, only to regret his decision within three months, citing the lack of transparency of bot accounts on Twitter.

　　So Twitter took it to court. Now, Musk can back up his claims with Zackett's whistleblower.

　　What did Zackett report?

　　Zackett was Twitter's head of security, reporting directly to the CEO. In January 2022, Zackett was fired by Twitter, which he claimed was Twitter's retaliation for his refusal to keep the company's breach secret. Last month, he provided the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) with a more than 200-page whistleblower material accusing Twitter of defrauding shareholders and violating its security standards agreement with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

　　That could expose Twitter to severe penalties. The FTC fined Facebook more than $5 billion in 2019 for violating a 2012 settlement with the FTC. In 2011, the FTC also reached a settlement with the company after it found that Twitter had failed to protect users' personal information. As part of the agreement, Twitter was required to establish a comprehensive security program that would protect users' privacy. But in fact, earlier this year, Twitter was fined $150 million by the FTC for violating the settlement agreement for collecting users' email addresses and phone numbers in the name of security, but for targeted advertising.

　　In the whistleblower letter, Zackett described Twitter as a chaotic and directionless company, the most important part of which is that Twitter has too many employees with direct access to the company's key systems. He noted that about half of Twitter's 7,000 or so employees have direct access to users' sensitive personal data and internal software, and that access is not closely monitored.

　　This violates standard engineering and safety principles. At a large airliner company the size of Twitter, engineers typically use staging environments to test data, but Zackett found that Twitter employees use real-time customer data and other sensitive information directly on the job to develop and test.

　　This isn't the first time Twitter has faced a security crisis, either. In 2020, Twitter suffered a large-scale hacking attack, and the accounts of many well-known users including Obama, Bill Gates and Musk were leaked. It was at that time that Zackett was invited by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorcy to join Twitter as head of security. Before that, he was a member of the hacker group L0pht and held positions at Google and then at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

　　Zachter also claims that he has repeatedly witnessed Twitter executives engaging in deceptive activities to influence the board, users and shareholders, during which Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal even demanded false and misleading information. document. For example, executives would receive up to $10 million in personal bonuses if they were able to significantly increase the number of active users, but there was no incentive to reduce the number of spam bot accounts.

　　Spam bot accounts are exactly the reason Musk is trying to push the Twitter acquisition, arguing that fake accounts make up a much larger percentage of Twitter users than the company claims.

　　In an internal email, Agrawal responded to Zackett's complaint. He said Zackett was fired because of "incompetent leadership and poor performance." The company is reviewing the claims in the whistleblower letter, but has so far found the whistleblower letter "full of inconsistent and inaccurate misrepresentations and does not provide important contextual information."

　　Other executives, including general counsel Sean Edgett, as well as privacy and security executives Damien Kieran and Lea Kissner, have Agreed with Agrawal's statement.

　　Does this matter to Musk?

　　Zackett is a pioneer in the security field, known in the industry for exposing software vulnerabilities. Given his status and past reputation as a former Twitter security chief, it's hard not to take his allegations seriously, especially at such a point in time.

　　Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Musk, has said: "We have issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko." The US Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Wednesday, August 24, that the Zackett was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate on allegations of Twitter security breaches. A hearing will be held on September 13.

　　Musk also signed a specific performance clause when he signed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. That means a judge can enforce his takeover of Twitter. In order to get himself out of the deal, he had to prove that Twitter had withheld some bad information when he signed the agreement, which would seriously damage his subsequent operation of Twitter.

　　So, compared to holding on to fake accounts, the new information provided by Zackett about system security and data privacy breaches is more deadly, and Musk has more reason to file an allegation of alleged fraud - as long as he can provide evidence to prove it These allegations are true.

　　In this case, while all of Zackett's allegations are without direct evidence, he gives Musk more negotiating leverage.

　　However, this has also pushed the litigation battle to a more extreme situation. Twitter's current stock price of about $40.79 is already well below the $54.20 when Musk made the offer. If Musk loses the case, he will have to clean up a mess full of problems.