Ex-Meta employee files whistleblower suit for alleged security flaws at WhatsApp
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An ex-Meta employee sued the social media company on Monday over allegations that its WhatsApp messaging service contained “systemic cybersecurity failures” that potentially compromise user privacy.
Attaullah Baig, WhatsApp’s former head of security, alleged that Meta retaliated against him after he notified leaders, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, of security issues at the messaging app.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that after joining WhatsApp in 2021, Baig found security flaws that violated federal securities laws and Meta’s legal obligations related to a 2020 privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
During a test conducted with Meta’s central security team, Baig alleged he “discovered that approximately 1,500 WhatsApp engineers had unrestricted access to user data, including sensitive personal information” and that the employees “could move or steal such data without detection or audit trail.”
A Meta spokesperson disputed Baig’s allegations in a statement, and downplayed his role and ranking at the company.
“Sadly this is a familiar playbook in which a former employee is dismissed for poor performance and then goes public with distorted claims that misrepresent the ongoing hard work of our team,” the spokesperson wrote. “Security is an adversarial space, and we pride ourselves in building on our strong record of protecting people’s privacy.”
Baig is being represented by the whistle blower organization Psst.org and the law firm Schonbrun, Seplow, Harris, Hoffman and Zeldes.
Although the lawsuit doesn’t claim that any user data was compromised, it says that Baig told superiors on multiple occasions that the cybersecurity failures posed a regulatory compliance risk. Some of the alleged security flaws include WhatsApp’s failure to maintain a 24-hour security operations center fitting of its size and scale, systems to monitor user data access and a “a comprehensive inventory of systems storing user data, preventing proper protection and regulatory disclosure.”
Baig’s attorneys claim in the suit that there were multiple instances of his superiors criticizing his work, and said that within three days of his initial “cybersecurity disclosure,” he began receiving “negative performance feedback.”
In November, Baig notified the SEC of the alleged “cybersecurity deficiencies and failure to inform investors about material cybersecurity risks,” the suit says.
A month later, Baig sent Zuckerberg the second of two letters, this time informing the CEO that he “had filed the SEC complaint” and that he was “requesting immediate action to address both the underlying compliance failures and the unlawful retaliation.”
In January, Baig then filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, documenting “the systemic retaliation” he claims he received after the security disclosures, according to the lawsuit.
The following month, the complaint says Meta fired Baig, citing “poor performance” as part of the company’s February round of layoffs affecting 5% of staff.
“The timing and circumstances of Mr. Baig’s termination establish clear causal connection to his protected activity, occurring in close temporal proximity to his external regulatory filings and representing the culmination of over two years of systemic retaliation for his cybersecurity disclosures and advocacy for compliance with federal law and regulatory orders,” the suit says.
Baig’s lawyers said that he submitted a notice to remove his SEC-related claims to federal court on Monday, and that he has “exhausted his administrative remedies prior to bringing this action.”
WATCH: Meta pushes back on ban on WhatsApp on devices used by House of Representatives.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz, center, speaks during a dinner at the White House in Washington on Sept. 4, 2025. President Donald Trump hosted technology and business leaders for dinner after they joined First Lady Melania Trump’s meeting of the Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force at the White House.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Oracle shares spiked 22% in extended trading on Tuesday after the database software maker indicated hefty growth prospects due to new cloud contracts, even as earnings and revenue missed estimates.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $1.47 adjusted vs. $1.48 expected
- Revenue: $14.93 billion vs. $15.04 billion expected
Revenue increased 12% from $13.3 billion a year earlier during the quarter, which ended on Aug. 31, according to a statement. Net income was about flat at $2.93 billion, or $1.01 per share, compared to $2.93 billion, or $1.03 per share, in the same quarter last year.
Oracle said its remaining performance obligation, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, now stands at $455 billion, up some 359% from a year earlier. During the quarter OpenAI said it signed an agreement with Oracle to develop 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity.
Alongside larger cloud providers such as Microsoft, Oracle has been one of the big winners of the artificial intelligence boom, due to its cloud infrastructure business and its access to Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) needed for large workloads. CEO Safra Catz said in the statement that the company signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers in the quarter.
Also in the quarter, Oracle said cloud rival Google’s Gemini AI models would become available on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure.
In the statement, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder, chairman and technology chief, said that in October the company will bring out an Oracle AI Database service that will allow for running AI models from OpenAI and other companies atop client data stored in Oracle databases. The effort would deepen Oracle’s product integration with OpenAI. In August, Oracle said it has brought OpenAI’s new GPT-5 AI model to its cloud applications.
Oracle’s generated $3.3 billion in revenue from cloud infrastructure, up 55% from a year earlier. The growth rate was 52% in the fiscal fourth quarter.
According to the statement, Oracle now sees $18 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue in the 2026 fiscal year, according to the statement. That suggests 75% growth from the $10.3 billion total in fiscal 2025. The company called for the sum to reach $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion and $144 billion in 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030 fiscal years.
Kirk Materne, an Evercore analyst with the equivalent of a buy rating on Oracle stock, said in a note to clients that he had anticipated $108 billion in fiscal 2029 cloud infrastructure revenue.
In July, Microsoft said it produced $75 billion in revenue from its Azure cloud infrastructure in the past 12 months. Market leader Amazon’s cloud revenue in the same period approached $112 billion.
Oracle shares hit a record last month and are up 45% in 2025 as of Tuesday’s close, while the S&P 500 index has gained 11%.
A gain of 22% or better on Wednesday would represent the best day for the stock since the dot-com boom of 1999 and its third-sharpest rally ever. It would also lift the company’s market cap past $800 billion.
Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is developing news. Please check back for updates.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report
WATCH: Oracle shares spike more than 12% despite earnings and revenue miss
Technology
Google Cloud chief details how search giants is making billions monetizing its AI products
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, speaks at a cloud computing conference held by the company in 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google’s cloud chief Thomas Kurian on Tuesday explained how the tech giant is already monetizing its various artificial intelligence services to generate revenue.
“We’ve made billions using AI already,” said Kurian, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco.
Kurian said that Google Cloud’s backlog of customer demand is growing faster than its revenue.
“Our backlog is now at $106 billion — it is growing faster than our revenue,” he said. “More than 50% of it will convert to revenue over the next two years.”
During its most recent second quarter, Google parent Alphabet in July reported revenue of $13.62 billion for its cloud computing business, which was a 32% increase from the year prior. Alphabet’s net income increased to $28.20 billion, up nearly 20% from the previous year. While Google’s cloud unit lags Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud units, it’s growing faster than them.
Here’s what Kurian said about how Google Cloud is monetizing AI:
Consumption
Kurian said some people pay Google by consumption, giving the example of AI infrastructure purchased by enterprise customers.
“Whether it’s a GPU, TPU or a model, you pay by token — meaning you pay by what you use,” he said. Tokens represent chunks of text that a AI models process when they generate or interpret language.
Some people use customer service systems, paying for it by what Kurian called “deflection rates.” Such rates are priced based on the business value customers get — things like uptime, scalability, AI features and security.
Google Cloud also provides tools like a “deflection dashboard,” that customers can use to track and manage agent interactions.
Last month, Google won a $10 billion cloud contract from Meta spanning six years. Meta had largely been reliant on Amazon Web Services for cloud infrastructure, though it also uses Microsoft Azure.
Subscriptions
Some customers pay for cloud services by way of subscriptions.
“You pay per user per monthly fee — for example, agents or Workspace,” said Kurian, referring to the company’s Gemini products, which has its own subscription tiers with various storage options, and the Google Workspace productivity suite, which also has several subscription tiers,.
Google One, a popular personal cloud storage subscription, offers a basic monthly service to users for $1.99 a month. Earlier this year, the company offered a new subscription tier called “Google AI Ultra,” which offers exclusive access to the company’s most “cutting edge” AI products with 30 terabytes of storage for $249.99 per month.
Kurian gave an example of Google Cloud’s cybersecurity subscription tiers, saying “we’ve seen huge growth in that.”
Upselling
Kurian said that upselling is another key aspect of Google Cloud’s strategy.
“We also upsell people as they use more of it from one version to another because we have higher quality models and higher-priced tiers,” Kurian said.
He said that once customers use Google’s AI services, they wind up using more of the company’s products.
“That leads customers who sign a commitment or contract to spend more than they contacted for, which drives more revenue growth,” he added.
Kurian says it is capturing new customers more quickly too.
“We’ve seen 28% sequential quarter-over-quarter growth in new customer wins in the first half of the year,” said Kurian, adding that nearly two-thirds of customers already use Google Cloud’s AI tools in a meaningful way.
“Selling to existing customers is always easier than selling to new customers, so it helps us improve the cost of sales,” Kurian said.
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