Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 448 posts

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

#381

Post by dzhiurgis »

htgb wrote: post #369
rapsey wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To produce great work you also need some pressure. Otherwise people will get real lazy very quickly.

Counterpoint: open source software, of which there are many great works without anyone being forced or pressured into making it. There are many more ways of getting motivation than applying "some pressure". Indeed, people are inherently curious and motivated, but it can easily be suppressed by environmental factors. In particular "stick and carrot"-type reward systems. For a (much more) elaborate expansion on this, s…

We barely recently got decent open source computers (but not smartphones), now try to imagine a GPL car...

That said it wouldn't it be cool have some sort of open source VW Bug. Stainless steel cyberbug, EV for the people. Low tech, curb lasts whole century, ubiquitous parts.

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

#382

Post by lake_vincent »

whatwherewhy wrote: post #371
Goronmon wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a middle area between being a "nice boss" and being a boss who calls out internal engineering implementation concerns (rightly or not) on Twitter. And then fire people who disagree in a response.

Well, Gates is an asshole, Jobs was an asshole - where's the middleground? Maybe niceness leads to [business] mediocrity.

Just because the Great Pyramids were built with slavery doesn't mean that slavery is okay, or that there is not a better way to build a pyramid.

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

#383

Post by iudqnolq »

greggsy wrote: post #23
staplung wrote: post #12

It’s called whitespace watermarking and seems to be one of those ideas that keeps getting re-invented. It’s used a lot, particularly in HTML where the rendering hides the identifying spaces. It can help you figure out if someone is scrapping your content.

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.

Boris Johnson planned to do it, but bragged in the press about the plan before implementing it.

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

#384

Post by prepend »

smhoff256 wrote: post #76
prepend wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about this stuff and expect they could also just look for a file of that exact size in bytes on work PCs or cloud storage. I think anyone who wants to write potentially career limiting things should exercise basic common sense like not using work computers and printers, removing fingerprinting elements, etc. In the future I expect more to do stuff like cut and paste between programs to alter the font and spa…

Because we all know just how great those whistleblower laws protect people right? Right?

I think they work out ok, I suppose. The big “whistleblowers” over the pas few years haven’t actually been whistleblowers because they leaked confidential secrets. So Reality Winner, Chesley Manning, etc were convicted independent of any whistleblower laws.

And why Snowden had to do an illegal act to reveal.

But I think these scenarios are totally different from these Twitter leaks where there’s no whistleblowing or illegal activity revealed.

But I think there are tons of examples where the law worked and whistleblowers were protected and even financially rewarded, https://www.phillipsandcohen.com/successful-cases/

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

#385

Post by randmeerkat »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #381
htgb wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: open source software, of which there are many great works without anyone being forced or pressured into making it. There are many more ways of getting motivation than applying "some pressure". Indeed, people are inherently curious and motivated, but it can easily be suppressed by environmental factors. In particular "stick and carrot"-type reward systems. For a (much more) elaborate expansion on this, s…

We barely recently got decent open source computers (but not smartphones), now try to imagine a GPL car... That said it wouldn't it be cool have some sort of open source VW Bug. Stainless steel cyberbug, EV for the people. Low tech, curb lasts whole century, ubiquitous parts.

> That said it wouldn't it be cool have some sort of open source VW Bug. Stainless steel cyberbug, EV for the people. Low tech, curb lasts whole century, ubiquitous parts.

AWS would just fork it, package it as a SaaS, give nothing back to the project and it would then slowly atrophy and cease to exist.

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

#386

Post by eschneider »

schemescape wrote: post #231
njovin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The simplest answer is that this didn’t happen and it’s just a myth.

The size of the saved word file (depending on exactly how it was saved and what version) will vary depending on how it was edited, and yeah, what metadata is there, so this seems...wrong.

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

#388

Post by olyjohn »

distances wrote: post #136
rtkwe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swapped over to a laser printer for that exact reason. There's still a few things a year I need to print and the laser printer stays working through the lulls where I always had issues with inkjets clogging up.

And I walk to a nearby copy shop for my printing needs. At maybe twice a year it's a rare enough occasion that I refuse to keep a printer myself.

That's what I do for photo printing. I use my laser for things like maps, tickets, instructions and forms. Love using it to print out instructions for use in the shop, where I can get my greasy fingers all over the paper, and not on my nice clean instruction manual.... When I need some color photos printed, I head to the print shop.

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

#389

Post by simondotau »

cma wrote: post #279
411111111111111 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly speaking, the story sounds somewhat believable to me. They likely misidentified the leaker with that silly analysis and fired them on the spot, would be just the usual modus operandi of musk.

Which printers in that timeframe ever directly printed word files?

It would be the resulting spool file that gets measured, not the source Doc file.

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

#390

Post by aksss »

bradjohnson wrote: post #290
robomartin wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So here we are, everyone fantasizing about espionage. Espionage isn't a fantasy, it's very much real. People go to jail for it all the time. The only question is to what degree might a company be affected or targeted. Taking steps to add a reasonable layer of security to attempt to protect costly IP isn't being paranoid at all. Not to mention that in some environments there are legal requirements, a prime example b…

Your particular example wouldn't be deterred from the tactics that Elon says that he used, though. If it's not leaked to the public it wouldn't be seen by those that encoded an identifier into it.

defense in layers. no single mechanism wins the trophy.
Post reply on HN