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Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

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Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#161

Post by Cthulhu_ »

njovin wrote: post #88
hash872 wrote: post #43

Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk (from a few years ago) had a fun similar story. Someone inside Tesla wrote a letter, I believe complaining about product defects, which was printed by a media outlet. Figuring that the leaker printed the letter at Tesla offices (i.e. likely didn't have a printer at home), Musk re-typed the letter in Word, found out exactly how many kilobytes a Word file with that exact text would be,…

The most impressive/unbelievable part of this story is that 2 Word files, created separately, ended up with the same exact file size. I'd assume with all of the Metadata they cram in that this would be unlikely.

I can imagine that a company actually saves everything being printed for security / auditing reasons, along with who issued the print request, etc.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#162

Post by Cthulhu_ »

simiones wrote: post #138
greggsy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Margaret Thatcher did this in the 80’s to help identify who was leaking cabinet documents to the press. I recall a story about Jobs tracking down leakers in his own executive suite by telling each of them a slightly different things in private. Not sure if it worked, but it can be a very effective deterrent.

It's pretty well known that map makers do this, adding non-existent small localities to detect when someone is blindly copying their work.

Same with dictionary makers, they will insert some credible looking made-up words here and there. Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#164

Post by mensetmanusman »

adrr wrote: post #45
mensetmanusman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identifying leaks is toxic? Overuse of the word is probably diluting its meaning.

Leaking documents is indicative of a a toxic environment where the trust has broken down in all directions.

If 0.00001% of the workforce leaks? Or does the % matter?

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#165

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Karunamon wrote: post #139
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have occasion to actually need to print something about twice a year. I don't know how it is that we live such drastically different lifestyles that you find them so incredibly useful.

Honestly, printers have gotten so cheap that the pain in the ass they can save when needed would make them useful to have for even that low of a volume. Printing a return label means I don't have to drive to a shipper. Your cheapest printers nowadays can scan and sometimes fax, which is useful for when legal or other requirements force you to submit a signed document. I'm not a fan of digital tickets for travel and e…

None of those are significant problems in my life I guess, certainly not enough to justify even dedicating any space to a piece of electronic equipment that I will use infrequently enough to be frustrated by whatever way it has decided to not work when I do want to use it.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#166

Post by insane_dreamer »

hash872 wrote: post #43

Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk (from a few years ago) had a fun similar story. Someone inside Tesla wrote a letter, I believe complaining about product defects, which was printed by a media outlet. Figuring that the leaker printed the letter at Tesla offices (i.e. likely didn't have a printer at home), Musk re-typed the letter in Word, found out exactly how many kilobytes a Word file with that exact text would be,…

> Figuring that the leaker printed the letter at Tesla offices (i.e. likely didn't have a printer at home)

sounds like this was likely an internal report (which would have been printed at the office as part of one's work), which later made its way to the media, rather than some letter stealthily written and sent to the media (which would have been unlikely to be printed at the office)

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#167

Post by Asdrubalini »

josefresco wrote: post #65

What's the best process to strip these hidden characters? Is the an app, or web service that will "clean" the copy?

Just use a for loop in Python over all characters and ignore each char that is not in the ASCII range of letters, numbers and punctuation. Or retype by hand if you don't know Python.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#168

Post by insane_dreamer »

brk wrote: post #68
hash872 wrote: post #43

Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk (from a few years ago) had a fun similar story. Someone inside Tesla wrote a letter, I believe complaining about product defects, which was printed by a media outlet. Figuring that the leaker printed the letter at Tesla offices (i.e. likely didn't have a printer at home), Musk re-typed the letter in Word, found out exactly how many kilobytes a Word file with that exact text would be,…

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would generally assume that everybody has at least 1 printer at home. I'm also not aware of many printers that keep logs for long durations, but perhaps their shared network printers were logging to some kind of system log.

> everybody has at least 1 printer at home

why would anyone have more than one at home?

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#169

Post by weberer »

brk wrote: post #68
hash872 wrote: post #43

Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk (from a few years ago) had a fun similar story. Someone inside Tesla wrote a letter, I believe complaining about product defects, which was printed by a media outlet. Figuring that the leaker printed the letter at Tesla offices (i.e. likely didn't have a printer at home), Musk re-typed the letter in Word, found out exactly how many kilobytes a Word file with that exact text would be,…

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would generally assume that everybody has at least 1 printer at home. I'm also not aware of many printers that keep logs for long durations, but perhaps their shared network printers were logging to some kind of system log.

I haven't needed to print anything at home in over a decade.
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