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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

#281

Post by wodenokoto »

rajathagasthya wrote: post #94
w00tw00tw00t wrote: post #69

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 ret…

> They could easily bypass Macbook security with a USB device Isn't this only possible if the laptop is unlocked?

If the machine doesn't have full harddrive encryption, you can just boot from USB/CD/Firewire and have access to everything.

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

#282

Post by etler »

kuschku wrote: post #277
bmon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a whitelist of hardware fingerprints, similar to what Microsoft does with Windows installations. Also, Google is known to have custom manufactured hardware, specifically with security in mind. I don't think the idea that Google is able to secure their own network against foreign devices is really that far-fetched.

None of that would solve the issue. Google can only verify what hardware you're running by sending a packet via ethernet to your device. You control all software running on your device, and can send a spoofed result. If you were crazy, you could even just emulate Google's hardware entirely and proxy all requests to that emulated hardware. Nonetheless, while this guy certainly wouldn't be able to do it, many Google em…

Couldn't they do a chip and pin style hardware solution where a security chip generates a response using a unique secret algorithm?

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

#283

Post by cobookman »

valleyer wrote: post #246
UncleMeat wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSH or a web editor.

That sounds awful! Is that just a "laptop" rule (i.e. are "desktops" exempt)?

Workstations mount what's called citc (clients in the cloud). And you can use whatever ide or editor you like. Code is never downloaded directly to the desktop. You don't really notice any performance issues with this and you get the benefit of being able to build or include any library without having to download it all.

Laptops can't mount citc, and you need to either SSH/rdp into a workstation or use a web based code editor.

Once you've used citc/Piper/blaze you'll find it's a great system and there is no good alternative... Yet

As for OS choice I believe only goobuntu can be used to modify Google's code repo.

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

#284

Post by [deleted] »

gwern wrote: post #102
tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being ultimately required by circumstance to make a substantial payment to settle a lawsuit does not imply that the payer was lying, or even incorrect, in their defense.

I think losing a lawsuit is definitely evidence for claims being false just as winning correlates with telling the truth about not doing wrong things, and if it is true that there is no correlation whatsoever between losing a lawsuit and making false claims, then the legal system has failed utterly (and incidentally, you have given me a great idea for a business model). Given the adversarial nature of the system and…

[deleted]

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

#285

Post by etler »

return0 wrote: post #255
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…

He could have wiped it with a cloth or something. It's kind of scary how they could figure out what he did after the wipe.

I'm guessing they saw it through remote access logs? If they see he downloaded gigs of data he wasn't supposed to be using for his job then that's very suspicious. I wonder how they found out that he copied it to an external hard drive though. I'll want to watch this case as it develops.

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

#286

Post by hocuspocus »

w00tw00tw00t wrote: post #193
whorleater wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be really weird for them to request you to bring a laptop, but sometimes when a company flies you out for an onsite and your return flight is that night, your options are either 1) leave your laptop with the hotel as luggage (pretty bad) or 2) bring your laptop to the interview. There's no real reason for them to know you have your laptop with you however.

they did not offer to provide me with a laptop and the interview format was such that I could google things and share some of my personal projects etc

That is weird. What kind of tech company doesn't have an old laptop or a Chromebook for such interview format? What if you don't have a personal laptop? I'm certainly not bringing my work laptop to a job interview...

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

#287

Post by TorKlingberg »

blackguardx wrote: post #259
manmal wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They would not use Git for huge binary documents if they were in their right mind.

Altium Vault uses SVN for version control (or at least did the last time I used it). Is that better than git for binaries?

Yes, svn handles large binaries just fine. Most last-generation version control systems do. It's probably the main thing keeping some companies from switching to git.

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

#288

Post by elastic_church »

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…

Patent infringement is the least of the worries.

Trade secret misappropriation can lead to criminal charges.

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

#289

Post by tyingq »

Qworg wrote: post #276
philsnow wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought waymo's lidar sensors were much, much cheaper than other sensors: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i... We're talking about reducing a ~$25000 part to ~$2500.

A factor of 10 and at least 3-4 years of engineering work? Yeah, that's no small potatoes.

That was a result, though, of Google collaborating with Velodyne. I suspect Velodyne would have reduced pricing to everyone as a result. And Google's not the only entity working towards less expensive LiDAR. There's Delphi/Quanergy, etc.

Just seems like a huge risk to save maybe $10k per vehicle (assuming price drops for everyone) for some relatively short time period.

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

#290

Post by aidos »

rasz_pl wrote: post #268
aidos wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You cant restore SSDs. I would assume Googlers are rolling SATA SSDs, if not M.2 PCIE ones. What Google could be doing is remote logging on the laptops - logs uploaded to ze cloud every time you connect to the mothership. Plugging in USB drive leaves trace with USB ID, volume information etc. Windows also logs this and more http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/USB_History_Viewing Protip: to exfiltrate data with minimal…

Really interesting! It's sobering to think about the ways that even in a system not set up for logging you can trace back through these actions.

I was asked to figure out what had happened on a system where some data had changed and 2 parties were blaming each other. After about a hour digging around I managed to piece together a picture of how Person X had got up on a Monday morning, discovered (on their mobile, home wifi) that they had made a mistake on Friday, then logged in on their desktop to fix it from home (first time they logged in at home), then went to work and blamed someone else.

What was remarkable was how many different sources there were to pick up bits and pieces from. In isolation there wasn't much to go on, but once you start the connecting the parts, it's really incriminating.

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