Twitter's former security head claims company misled regulators about bot accounts

A whistleblower complained that Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) misled federal regulators about its defenses against hackers and spam accounts, CNN and the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The news reports cited disclosures by the social media company’s former security chief Peiter Zatko, who said the social media company executives are not motivated and don’t have the resources to understand the actual number of bots on the platform entirely.

Twitter is embroiled in a legal battle with Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) Chief Executive Elon Musk after the world’s richest person said in July that he was terminating an agreement to buy the company in a $44 billion deal, alleging it had violated the deal contract.

Musk has accused Twitter of hiding information about calculating the percentage of bots on the service.