The Department of Justice has charged Weibao Wang, a former Apple worker, for stealing his former employer’s autonomous automobile expertise.
CNBC studies that Wang labored at Apple as a software program engineer from 2016 to 2018. As a part of the annotation workforce, he was capable of acquire “broad access” to databases that solely a small variety of staff had entry to. According to the indictment, solely two % of Apple’s roughly 135,000 staff had entry to “one or more” of the databases that Wang accessed.
Four months earlier than Wang resigned from his place, he reportedly took a job with an unnamed Chinese firm that can be growing autonomous expertise and started to steal “large amounts” of Apple’s tech. He now faces fees for stealing or making an attempt to steal Apple’s “entire autonomy source code,” in addition to different programs and {hardware} descriptions to present to his new employer.
Law enforcement initially raided Wang’s home in California again in June 2018 and reportedly discovered massive quantities of confidential data. Despite promising that he wouldn’t flee the nation, Wang was capable of board a flight to China. If he’s ever extradited and convicted, every of the six fees he faces reportedly carries a most sentence of 10 years.
If this story sounds acquainted to you, it’s as a result of this isn’t the primary time {that a} former Apple worker has been accused of stealing Apple’s autonomous expertise to present to a Chinese firm. Last 12 months, Xiaolang Zhang pleaded responsible to the same crime and like Wang had deliberate to flee the nation. And in 2019, Jizhong Chen was additionally charged with stealing delicate data. Just like Wang and Zhang, Chen tried to flee to China, as nicely. How Apple can repair the issue of staff stealing secrets and techniques, we don’t know, however clearly, there’s a sample right here.
Source: jalopnik.com