There has been an investigation into a data breach that affected the car manufacturer Tesla earlier this year, which has ended up being the result of "insider wrongdoing", a data breach notification filed by Tesla has revealed.
A notice filed with Maine’s Attorney General’s Office on Friday shed more light on Tesla’s May data breach, revealing that there was a massive theft of employee records and the company blamed “insider wrongdoing.”
The affected individuals were notified by Tesla in a letter dated August 18 that laid out details about the problem. There was a letter from the company saying that the information that was leaked included the names and contact information of both current and former employees. Even though social security numbers were revealed, the letter did not mention them.
In a large data breach that affected employees of more than 75,000 companies, Tesla has claimed that insider wrongdoing was responsible for the breach. It was confirmed by President Elon Musk, the owner of the electric car maker Tesla, that in a data breach notice that was filed with Maine's attorney general, two former employees had leaked more than 75,000 individuals' personal information to a foreign media outlet after a thorough investigation had been conducted.
There were over 23,000 files within the data archive, and the data contained sensitive data that belonged not only to current but also to former employees of Telsa. There was data about employees' phone numbers, personal email addresses, and salaries, as well as bank information for their customers and confidential information about Tesla's production. As well as social security numbers, it also included some of Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, who used social security numbers to operate the company.
A further 2,400 complaints were also leaked from Tesla customers about their vehicles, which is part of the data revealed.
On August 18, Tesla of America filed a data breach notice with the Maine Attorney General's office announcing a 75,735 employee data breach, which had been caused by a breach of security caused by “insider wrongdoing .”
In its announcement, Tesla said that its investigation into the breach had revealed that two former Tesla employees tried to misappropriate the information by violating IT security policies and protecting the data as required by Tesla to gain entry to the report. Handelsplatt was allegedly the recipient of the data that had been shared by the former employees.
Investigations and Lawsuits Following a Leak
According to Tesla, two former employees are being sued for releasing the data and a court order has been issued that prevents them from using, accessing, or disseminating the data in the future. In its notice, Tesla said that it cooperated with law enforcement and external forensics experts to handle the investigation and would continue to take appropriate steps as needed in the future.
A top German news organization, Handelsblatt, has confirmed that it received more than 100 GB of data from former Tesla employees over the last few weeks. This information was used as a basis for slamming Tesla for failing to adequately protect the personal information collected from customers, employees, and business partners, according to the news site. As reported by Handelsblatt newspaper, Musk's social security number was also included in the leak, which was made public by Bloomberg.
A Tesla spokesperson confirmed that the data was shared with German newspaper Handelsblatt by two former employees. It says that it is "legally prohibited from inappropriately using the information" and says that it will not publish the information.
There was a report in Handelsblatt in May that Tesla was affected by a "massive" data breach that revealed all sorts of information about Tesla employees, as well as complaints made by customers about their vehicles.
There were approximately 23,000 files, including 100 gigabytes of confidential data, obtained by the publication dubbed the Tesla Files, which contained more than 23,000 internal Tesla documents. Among the personal information stolen were the details of Tesla employees, payment information from customers, production secrets, as well as complaints from customers about the features of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) car.
Tesla's Data Privacy Concerns Continue to Mount
In addition to the May incident, Tesla has had several privacy issues in the past. A letter sent in April by senators Edward J. Markey and Richard Blumenthal raised questions about Musk's handling of reports that employees had been sharing sensitive images captured by cameras in customers' vehicles between 2019 and 2022 and how the company handled them. Due to the content of the report, Tesla is now the subject of a class action lawsuit.
Tesla workers were reported by Reuters in April to have shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars, but the details of this incident were kept under wraps. The reports stated that between 2019 and 2022, employees of the company shared images and videos that were captured by the cameras in their cars.
