Tesla alleges former employee stole confidential data

In a lawsuit, carmaker says ex-employee hacked into computer system to steal data

Tesla Inc. in a lawsuit Wednesday accused a former employee of hacking into the automaker’s computer system to steal company data and send it to an unnamed third party.

The Silicon Valley electric-car maker’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nevada, says the former employee, Martin Tripp, admitted to writing software to hack the company’s manufacturing operating software and transferring several gigabytes of data to “outside entities,” including dozens of confidential photographs and videos of the system. He also wrote a computer code to export Tesla data off its network, Tesla alleged in its suit.

ATesla spokesman declined to comment further.

Mr. Tripp didn’t have an immediate comment.

Earlier this week, Chief Executive Elon Musk in a memo to employees cautioned them to be on the lookout for possible saboteurs, noting that an employee had been found conducting an “extensive and damaging sabotage” to the company’s operations and hacked into the company’s manufacturing operating system to export data.

Asked on Twitter whether he was referring to Mr. Tripp in his memo, Mr. Musk didn’t directly answer yes or no, but suggested there are multiple people attempting to harm Tesla. “There is more, but the actions of a few bad apples will not stop Tesla from reaching its goals,” Mr. Musk wrote. “With 40,000 people, the worst 1 in 1000 will have issues. That’s still ~40 people.”

Tesla said in its suit that Mr. Tripp began working at Tesla’s battery factory outside of Reno in October 2017 as a process technician. The company alleges that Mr. Tripp was reassigned to a new role in May 2018 after his managers said he had performance problems, and was disruptive and combative with colleagues.

“Tripp retaliated against Tesla by stealing confidential and trade-secret information and disclosing it to third parties, and by making false statements intended to harm the company,” the lawsuit said.

The allegations have not been tested in court.

Tesla’s investigators inter- viewed Mr. Tripp on June 14 and 15, during which he allegedly admitted hacking and transferring the data, the lawsuit said.

The disruption comes as Tesla is trying to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan by the end of the month to 5,000 units in a single week, a goal that has eluded it for six months and placed great pressure on its finances.

Mr. Musk has rejected analysts’ calls to raise more cash, saying Tesla will generate positive cash flow in the second half of the year after reaching the 5,000-a-week build rate and become profitable in the third and fourth quarters. To help reach that profitability goal, Tesla cut about 9% of its workforce last week.

Tesla’s battery factory has been a trouble spot in the rampup of the Model 3. It has struggled to ramp up automation there and required new equipment to be installed.

Tesla’s lawsuit alleged that Mr. Tripp made false claims with the information he took, including that punctured battery cells had been used in some Model 3 customer vehicles, and that he overstated how much scrap material Tesla generated during the manufacturing process. Business Insider earlier this month published a story it said was based upon internal Tesla records claiming that a misprogrammed robot was puncturing the battery cells, and that “an insane amount of raw material” was being scrapped. The lawsuit doesn’t mention the article.