Tesla alleges former worker of hacking and transferring data

Tesla Inc has sued a former worker claiming that he hacked the electric automaker’s trade secrets and transferred huge amounts of company data to third parties, as per a lawsuit filed in federal court in Nevada on Wednesday.

In its lawsuit Tesla says that Martin Tripp, who earlier worked at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, had confessed writing software that hacked the automaker’s manufacturing operating system, shifting several gigabytes of its data to third parties and making false claims to the media.

Tripp was not available for comment right away. His hacking software was running on three separate computer systems of other people at Tesla so that the information would be exported even after he left the firm and falsely implicate those individuals, as per the lawsuit.

“Under a few months of Tripp joining Tesla, his managers identified Tripp as having issues with job performance and at times being disruptive and combative with his colleagues,” the lawsuit stated.

“As a result of these and other concerns, on or about May 17, 2018, Tripp was assigned to a new role. Tripp expressed anger that he was reassigned.”

Previously this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk informed employees in an email that an unnamed Tesla worker had carried out “extensive and damaging sabotage” to the firm’s operations.

“The full extent of his actions are not yet clear, but what he has confessed so far is pretty bad,” Musk wrote without describing who he was referring to.

A Tesla spokesperson had no further comment.