Sorry but this is a coverup that Alex is using to defend himself. He had easy access to Wes, as Wes was actually demanding a reply via Facebook&#x27;s own system in place to communicate with researchers, and not receiving one.<p>Alex would have been aware via the original RCE bug that Wes was reporting on behalf of himself and not his employer. Also, it is reasonable that Wes would have mentioned that he is reporting the bug on behalf of his employer from the beginning.<p>I presume that Alex knew these things, but he decided to take a more dramatic approach to get Wes to stop, by contacting his employer. It obviously would be leverage, and Alex knew that he could also leverage his position at Facebook to use a security firm in the industry (who would understandably not want to do anything to jeopardize its relationship with one of the largest internet companies in the world) to ask their employee to stop.<p>I do not believe that Alex legitimately believed that Synack (Wes&#x27; employer) was behind the research, but he knew it would be an effective way to stop Wes from continuing, so he decided to pull those strings.