Twitter shareholders have voted in favor of the proposed acquisition of Elon Musk
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Twitter shareholders on Tuesday approved 98.6% of the agreement to buy the platform from billionaire Elon Musk, a month before the start of the trial aimed at forcing the latter to honor his promise. At the same time, Peiter Zatko, the former head of security for the social network, detailed his report submitted to the American authorities on serious security breaches.
Twitter shareholders on Tuesday (September 13) approved the deal to buy Elon Musk’s platform, just after hearing a whistleblower who, like the billionaire, accused the company of having hidden problems.
The vote, 98.6% in favor of the transaction, consolidates the social network’s position a month before the opening of the lawsuit it launched against Elon Musk to force him to honor his promise.
At the beginning of July, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX unilaterally terminated the contract signed at the end of April for the acquisition of Twitter at 54.20 dollars per share, or a valuation of 44 billion dollars.
But this election represents scant consolation for the blue bird who was publicly criticized by a former top official. Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s former security chief who was fired in January, detailed on Tuesday his report submitted to US authorities on serious security breaches.
>> To also read: “Twitter: Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, the whistleblower who knew too much”
“Twitter’s management misled elected officials, regulators and even its own board of directors,” he told Judiciary Committee senators at the outset. “They don’t know what data they have, where it is, where it came from and obviously they can’t protect it,” said the expert, better known by his pseudonym, Mudge. “Employees have too much access (…), it doesn’t matter who has the key if you don’t have locks on the doors,” he said.
“Profit before salvation”
The 51-year-old computer scientist, who was recruited at the end of 2020 after a spectacular hack of several profiles, says he tried to alert the group’s senior officials, in vain. “They don’t have the skills to understand the extent of the problem,” he said. “More importantly, their executive bonuses encourage them to put profit before safety.”
At the end of August, the press release of the whistleblower report, which is highly respected in the cybersecurity community, had the effect of a bombshell. Twitter has dismissed these accusations as baseless, but they come at a good time for Elon Musk.
He who once wanted to turn the platform into a public place “essential to democracy” believes the San Francisco-based company lied to him about the proportion of automated accounts and spam among its users. In his opinion, this would greatly exceed the 5% estimated by Twitter management.
But Peiter Zatko directly mentions in his report the questions the Tesla boss asked the bots. He cited “misleading” statements by Parag Agrawal, the head of the network, and said Twitter’s tools were “outdated”, its teams were “overwhelmed” and “inefficient”.
A popcorn emoji
Claims that Elon Musk’s lawyers will try to use to their advantage during the trial scheduled for mid-October in a specialized court. In its press release on the shareholder vote, the Californian group assures that it “continues to believe that the alleged termination of the purchase agreement is invalid and unfounded”.
“I did not make my whistleblower disclosures out of malice or to harm Twitter,” Mudge assured the senators. “Given the real harm to users and national security, I decided it was necessary to take the personal and professional risk, for me and my family, to raise the alarm,” he said.
For his part, Elon Musk tweeted a popcorn-shaped emoji, suggesting he was following the audition with excitement.
AFP included
