Twitter Whistleblower Peiter Zatko To Depose Before Senate Panel: What You Need To Know

Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) whistleblower Peiter Zatko will testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee next month regarding his complaint that the social media platform misled regulators, Reuters reported.

What Happened: Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the committee’s chair, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a ranking member of the committee, will hold a full committee hearing, to look into “allegations of widespread security failures at Twitter, a joint statement read.

“Mr. Zatko’s allegations of widespread security failures and foreign state actor interference at Twitter raise serious concerns. If these claims are accurate, they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world."

The committee said it intends to hold the hearing at 10 a.m. on Sept. 13 and would take further steps to “get to the bottom of these alarming allegations.”

See also: What The Whistleblower Means For Elon Musk And Twitter: 'Gasoline Into The Fire'

Zatko, a cybersecurity expert and the previous head of security at Twitter, said in an 84-page complaint that Twitter violated an 11-year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming that it had a solid security plan.

The complaint was filed with the SEC, DoJ, and the FTC in July.

Thousands of employees at Twitter had “wide-ranging and poorly tracked internal access” to core company software that had led to the embarrassing hacking of the accounts of high-profile accounts, Zatko alleged.

Why It’s Important: The development will likely have implications for the ongoing legal challenge between Twitter and Elon Musk, initiated by the former for enforcing the latter’s agreement to take the company private. Musk walked away from the deal after he found discrepancies with the company's spam bot disclosures.

Price Action: Twitter closed Wednesday’s session 2.33% higher at $40.79, according to Benzinga Pro data.