Apple’s autonomous car project
FBI charges a former Apple employee for looting trade secrets of Apple’s autonomous car project. Tech monster Apple hired the accuser Xiaolang Zhang in Dec. 2015 to work on the company’s autonomous vehicle project. Before flying back to his native place china, he loots the Apple’s autonomous car project.
According to the Apple complaint, Zhang worked on designing and testing circuit boards to analyze sensor data for the self-driving car project. Zhang was granted broad access to secure and confidential internal databases containing trade secrets.
Apple also says, he planned to work for an electric car startup in China called Xiaopeng Motors. Last year, his startup received an investment from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba at nearly $4 billion.
Apple investigation reveal activities
When Zhang enlightened his Apple chief regarding his intentions, Apple investigated Zhang’s past network activity, forensic analysis of his work devices, also his activities on the Apple campus.
The company’s security group found that Zhang’s network activity targeted on downloading extensive pages of data from confidential databases that he approached. Also, the CCTV footage showed, on April 28th Zhang carrying a computer keyboard, some cables, and a large box from the autonomous vehicle lab.
He disclosed to Apple that he was seeking a job at Xpeng and said that he had also Air Dropped data to his wife’s laptop. After he agreed to a search of that laptop, Apple discovered around 40GB of information, 60 percent of legal groups.
The company says, Zhang guaranteed to work for Xpeng, however it’s unclear if he ever did. Delegates for Xpeng and Alibaba couldn’t go after remark in time for publication.
According to the complaint, the FBI looked through his home on June 27th, and when the office talked with Zhang that day, he admitted to the same things that he had told Apple.
In the latest information technology news, on July 7th, the FBI discovered that Zhang had purchased a round trip ticket from San Jose, California to Beijing. While, Federal Government arrested Zhang at San Jose International Airport.
