Indian govt forced Twitter to hire agent: Report

Representational image.

The Indian government is accused of forcing Twitter to hire one of its agents as a full- time employee, possibly securing access to ‘vast amounts of sensitive data’, according to a complaint filed by the social media company’s former head of security Pieter Zatko with US government bodies.

The documents were made public by the Washington Post newspaper. Whistleblower Aid, a non-profit legal organisation representing Zatko, confirmed to Moneycontrol the authenticity of the documents. The organisation also told Moneycontrol that Zatko stands by everything written in the disclosure.

In the complaint, Zatko, who is better known by his hacker name Mudge and as a prominent member of the hacker think-tank L0pht, said these government agents could have been able to access sensitive data at Twitter because of its architectural flaws. The larger complaint document talked about security vulnerabilities in Twitter which allegedly left them susceptible to hacks.

A Twitter spokesman said Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance.

“What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Mr. Zatko's allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be,” the spokesman said.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MietY) had no comment. MietY is the nodal ministry of the government that deals with social media platforms and related policy matters and their compliance.

Hacker-turned-cybersecurity expert Pieter ‘Mudge’ Zatko is well-known in the cybersecurity world. In the late 1990s, Zatko along with other hackers of the group called L0pht deposed before the US Senate to explain the vulnerabilities in the internet at the time.

He is being represented by Whistleblower Aid, the same body that represented Frances Haugen, who leaked troves of documents related to Meta.

Zatko’s complaint, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, among others, said Twitter's executive team ‘believed’ that the Indian government had succeeded in placing agents on the company payroll.

“By knowingly permitting an Indian government agent direct unsupervised access to the company’s systems and user data, Twitter executives violated the company's articulated commitments to its users,” the complaint read.

Twitter's CEO has also weighed in on the matter, as shown in an internal memo obtained by a CNN journalist.

Agrawal in the memo said, "There are news reports outlining Twitter's privacy, security, and data, protection practices that were made by Mudge Zatko, a former Twitter executive who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance.

We are reviewing the redacted claims that have been published, but what we've seen so far is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context."

Agrawal said that Zatko was accountable for many aspect of the work that the latter highlighted in his complaints.

Zatko’s complaint is expected to have a significant bearing on the legal battle between Twitter and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who backed out of a deal to buy the company citing lack of information about authentic users. Interestingly, Twitter's importance of India has also found a mention in this legal battle.

On the domestic front, Twitter has also sued the Indian government regarding compliance with the Information Technology Rules, 2021. The matter is scheduled to be heard on August 25.