The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow 9/13/2022
Many of Peiter (Mudge) Zatko’s former colleagues have received offers of payment for information about him.On August 23rd, a Slack chat for former employees of the payments company Stripe began filling with accounts of strange queries about an ex-colleague. “I’m getting inundated with paid interview requests,” one of the former employees, Dan Foster, wrote. Another, Marty Wasserman, later posted that he’d received a similar message via e-mail. “Hi Marty, Hope you’re having a great week!” the message read. “I’m currently working on a project regarding leadership in tech, and my client is hoping to speak to an experienced professional about a particular individual you may have worked with.” The message requested a “45-60 minute compensated phone consultation.” Wasserman was suspicious of the timing. “Preeeettyy sure this is regarding Mudge,” he wrote, pasting it in the Slack chat with his former colleagues. “Hard pass.”
Hours earlier, CNN and the Washington Post had reported that Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter (Mudge) Zatko, had filed a whistle-blower disclosure to federal agencies, accusing the social-media platform of reckless security practices. Zatko’s sweeping claims, if proven, could aid Elon Musk in his attempt to terminate his forty-four-billion-dollar agreement to acquire Twitter, a legal fight with implications of billions of dollars for investors. The dozens of e-mails and LinkedIn messages received by people in Zatko’s professional orbit appeared to be mostly from research-and-advisory companies, part of a burgeoning industry whose clients include investment firms and individuals jockeying for financial advantage through information. At least six research outfits—Gerson Lehrman Group (G.L.G.), AlphaSights, Mosaic Research Management, Ridgetop Research, Coleman Research Group, and Guidepoint—approached former colleagues of Zatko’s at Stripe, Google, and the Pentagon research agency DARPA. All offered to pay for information, sometimes noting that the compensation would be high or apparently unrestricted. At least two investment firms, Farallon Capital Management L.L.C. and Pentwater Capital Management L.P., also sought information from individuals close to Zatko.
An associate at AlphaSights reached out to Wasserman via e-mail. She did not identify her firm’s client, but she wrote that they wanted to understand Zatko’s “personality, leadership style, validity and history.” She added, “We compensate well because we know this is a difficult and confusing ask at first.” Another Stripe veteran, Jaclyn Schoof, wrote to the Slack group that she had received the same offer from AlphaSights. “They said they didn’t care how much it would cost them… seems really weird,” she said. A fourth member of the group, Niels Provos, who had worked with Zatko at Google and was later persuaded by him to fill his role at Stripe, received offers of payment from AlphaSights, as well as from two other firms, Farallon and Mosaic. “They were happy to pay $1000/hr when I was fishing for more information,” he wrote, of Farallon’s consultant. (A spokesperson for Farallon said that payment was discussed only after Provos broached the subject.)
More:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-search-for-dirt-on-the-twitter-whistle-blower
