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Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

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Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#61

Post by aidos »

tajen wrote: post #37
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all their company laptops?

Yeah, they definitely have some really specific accusations about what went on:

>>> To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints.

The bit about connecting the external drive is interesting but I guess there's probably a ghost of that action somewhere on a drive (assuming you could more or less restore the drive before being wiped).

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#62

Post by kbenson »

vgt wrote: post #47
leereeves wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was confused as to what stealing a patent actually meant Indeed. The current title of the article is > Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets Secrets, not Patents. If patents was the original title perhaps the author was confused.

The filing itself claims both [0]. [0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...

Patent infringement, or patent theft?

How do you steal a patent? If you steal (to be clear, illegally take) information and then use that to get a patent, is that stealing a patent? Is there case law on on something like that?

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#63

Post by revelation »

Animats wrote: post #57

Google might have been better off with patents than trade secrets. There are financial penalties for theft of trade secrets, but once the secret is out, no injunctions. The one who stole it can use it. With patents, injunctions are available, although hard to get. Anyway, several companies are developing automotive LIDAR units which are better than Google's rotating things. Quantergy and Velodyne claim to be close to…

I doubt there is any hot technology in some LIDAR interface board in the first place.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#64

Post by kbenson »

aidos wrote: post #61
tajen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all their company laptops?

Yeah, they definitely have some really specific accusations about what went on: >>> To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the lapt…

It could well be that they have comprehensive debugging enabled for all their employees on work supplied machines. I know they beta test through employees, so that would make sense, to some degree. If the debug log is remotely synced, as an added benefit they get to review actions after the fact, which might be what happened here.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#65

Post by the_economist »

danjoc wrote: post #35

There's something very wrong in the world when the people who invent things aren't the main beneficiary of their own inventions. Edit: A guy downloads 9.7GB of other people's work, walks off with it, and sells it. Flushing years of work from hundreds of engineers down the toilet. You down voters really support that? Amazing.

I imagine that throughout human history this has been the case far often than not.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#66

Post by ssambros »

lindowe wrote: post #46
the_watcher wrote: post #26

Minor fix: Waymo is suing for stealing secrets, not patents. As far as I know, it's not actually possible to steal a patent.

Infringement of patents (the ’273 patent, entitled “Microrod Compression of Laser Beam in Combination with Transmit Lens")

Infringement, yes, but how can you 'steal' a patent?

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#68

Post by caseysoftware »

chrisper wrote: post #45
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

Is it just me or is the font on medium.com super blurry? Also, how did google know he downloaded all the stuff through some software?

It shouldn't be hard. On Box, you can have it notify you every time someone downloads any file in a given directory or even specific files. I assume they have at least comparable infosec, if not explicit tripwires/honeypots in files that should never be downloaded.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#69

Post by w00tw00tw00t »

I had an interview there where the manager asked me to leave my laptop behind and go for a walk. I was hesitant after hearing stories of Uber conducting electronic espionage against its competitors. They could easily bypass Macbook security with a USB device (I had heard of that on HN too) so I was very nervous to leave my laptop behind and noted its exact orientation and position on the table. Sure enough when I returned my laptop had changed both position and orientation, but only enough to tell if you had specifically memorized it. I could be paranoid. They could have simply moved things on the desk. But anyway, people who are paranoid like me are advised not to take their laptops into Uber interviews. They are capable of just about anything, or so thinks my now paranoid self.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#70

Post by startupdiscuss »

tajen wrote: post #37
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all their company laptops?

This was the noteworthy part for me as well.

They had to know that he:

1. modified the software on his laptop

2. logged into an area he should not have had access to (this is probably standard)

3. attached an external drive (possible, but standard?)

4. and they got all this info after he deleted the drive, which means they either went in and found remaining data on the drive or else they captured the info in real time.

I suppose if the drive is clean now, and they know he downloaded data, they can infer that he wiped it.

I suppose that if they know he accessed it, and there was software on his computer preventing him from doing so, they can infer that he downloaded something to overcome it.

But knowing that he connected to an external drive implies active monitoring. That's the part I am most curious about.

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