Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko has told congress that the company had at least one undercover Chinese agent working within its company.
Zatko was fired this January as Twitter’s head of security, after internally raising a litany of security concerns. He later brought these same issues to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.
During his congressional testimony overnight, during a two-and-a-half hour hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Zatko made a number of explosive claims, including that thousands of Twitter employees have access to sensitive personal user data, including international spies.
He said the FBI contacted Twitter to inform them they had a Chinese agent on its books.
“I had been told, because the corporate security, physical security team had been contacted and told there was at least one agent of the [Ministry of State Security], which is one of China’s intelligence services, on the payroll inside Twitter,” Zatko said.
“While it was disturbing to hear, I and many others, recognising the state of the environment at Twitter, were really thinking, if you are not placing foreign agents inside Twitter — because it’s very difficult to detect them, it is very valuable to a foreign agent to be inside there, as a foreign intelligence company – you’re most likely not doing your job.”
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Zatko also claims he knew of at least one Indian agent on the Twitter payroll, and that an unnamed Twitter executive was laissez faire when told of the breach.
“I’m reminded of one conversation with an executive when I said, ‘I am confident that we have a foreign agent,’ and their response was, ‘Well, since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more? Let’s keep growing the office,” Zatko said.
Twitter said: “Today’s hearing only confirms that Mr. Zatko’s allegations are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.”
