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

Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#281

Post by notatoad »

khurs wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets even worse. The person not only kept the laptop and used an exploit to download confidential Apple documents, they bragged about it to a contact who was still working at Apple who was also feeding him information: > Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maint…

"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..." But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything. Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

>it’s also that company’s responsibility

Is it? I mean legally. Obviously it’s dumb of Apple to have left this guys access open, but that doesn’t mean they actually had any legal responsibility to lock him out. As far as I understand, the law is pretty clear that you can’t access anything you’re not allowed to by policy, whether there’s a technical block or not.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#282

Post by rukuu001 »

Casually dragging new employees into the deepest shit, it’s breathtaking. Also the naïveté of going along with it??

> He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring “Actual parts” from Apple to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#283

Post by ecommerceguy »

sfifs wrote: post #245
Robdel12 wrote: post #70

OpenAI is about to get ROCKED on this. From this report, this looks open and shut. Apple has basically infinite money and incredible lawyers. Not sure what OpenAI can counter with unless they have clear, hard evidence this hasn’t been happening.

Well OpenAI is offering equity to the US Government (and who knows who else privately) Tim Apple famously refused to bring manufacturing back to the US when the current president asked and play hardball on infosec. While this is a civil case, increasingly judiciary seems to be an extension of the executive. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Does this ring true in California?

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#285

Post by m463 »

Robdel12 wrote: post #70

OpenAI is about to get ROCKED on this. From this report, this looks open and shut. Apple has basically infinite money and incredible lawyers. Not sure what OpenAI can counter with unless they have clear, hard evidence this hasn’t been happening.

I hope they can pull it off.

That said, silicon valley is full of stories where people brazenly stole from company A to start company B and pretty much got away with it.

EDIT: this is the one I remember:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_Design_Systems%2C_Inc....

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#286

Post by appplication »

grvdrm wrote: post #274
Aurornis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets even worse. The person not only kept the laptop and used an exploit to download confidential Apple documents, they bragged about it to a contact who was still working at Apple who was also feeding him information: > Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maint…

>This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply you. Spot on perfect. I see this too often and not just in tech.

An acquaintance of mine was accidentally wired about $100k when it was supposed to be $5k. Before it could be reversed, they moved accounts and immediately bought a one way flight out of country. They then changed all socials and handles. They are now ignoring all court documents and are on track to get a default judgement against them.

Their rationale? “It’s mine, they owed me this”. They are 100% convinced that they are in the right, not just that they can keep it but that they actually intended to send them this to begin with. I get it $100k isn’t nothing but they’re also throwing their life away for less than what they used to make a year in salary.

People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#287

Post by trollbridge »

achierius wrote: post #264
khurs wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..." But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything. Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

Many devices are indeed locked down. But given that it's an OS company and hardware vendor, many employees have access to hardware with e.g. SoC fusing that allows them to install custom-signed firmware. It's very difficult to make an OS lock out the people whose job it is to build the platform that OS depends on.

I once worked at a cybersecurity firm and they had a particularly botched rollout of MDM to Macs (which would regularly put the machine into an undesirable mode of 100% CPU usage plus max out upload bandwidth repeatedly trying and failing to backup the machine to some online backup service). I had work to do, so I simply disabled the MDM profile for the machine, installed an OS to my liking, and restored the apps I wanted to use, and went about things.

A year or so later the company hit hard times and we had a large layoff that affected me, and at the end of the video call, the directory of my department mentioned that they needed to wipe my laptops but it "wasn't showing up in MDM". I said I'd be glad to jump on a call with IT to fix that, but then he mentioned the IT staff were laid off too.

I then suggested I did get hired for my cybersecurity expertise, that I do take my obligations seriously, and he could just ask me to do whatever they were planning to do from the MDM console, and it would get done. He insisted that wouldn't be necessary since in his worldview the MDM was unbreakable and he just needed to reconnect to Wi-Fi or something.

Very amusing worldview. In the real world, where I live, I would assume a highly competent employee could exfiltrate trade secrets without me being able to catch them via standard / automated means. This particular Apple former employee got caught because he bragged about it, not because of technical means to catch him. As I've pointed out to a number of people, the very best DLP solution can be completely obviated by someone aiming a camera at their company-issue workstation's monitor.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#288

Post by JohnMakin »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #262
throw0101a wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them […] At $WORK we have the option of getting a work smartphone or having the company pay for (at portion of) our monthly mobile bill. I chose a work device because I do not want any cross-contamination. (Others chose payment because they did not want the 'hassle' of carrying a second device (and to save some cash).)

In my early career, I used my work computer (off hours) to do personal work. I never made any money, but it was still wrong. At some point, I couldn’t live with myself, and purchased my own computer (better than what work gave me, anyway). I never used my personal cell for work. The closest thing was coordinating meetups, when traveling.

It’s not just wrong, you’re potentially allowing anything you do on that work computer to 1) be owned by the company and 2) be discoverable in court. it’s amazing how many it orgs are so lax with this. personal/work devices should and always be entirely separate. BYOD is a really bad crutch and a potential compliance nightmare timebomb for all parties.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#289

Post by lotsofpulp »

mock-possum wrote: post #215
aobdev wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve made an extreme leap in your interpretation of the comment you’re replying to…

No, ‘high/low-trust culture’ has lately been co-opted as a racist dog whistle.

I feel like it used to be an effective dog whistle, but has ceased to be since Trump and company came around.

Re: Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

#290

Post by WatchDog »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #262
throw0101a wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them […] At $WORK we have the option of getting a work smartphone or having the company pay for (at portion of) our monthly mobile bill. I chose a work device because I do not want any cross-contamination. (Others chose payment because they did not want the 'hassle' of carrying a second device (and to save some cash).)

In my early career, I used my work computer (off hours) to do personal work. I never made any money, but it was still wrong. At some point, I couldn’t live with myself, and purchased my own computer (better than what work gave me, anyway). I never used my personal cell for work. The closest thing was coordinating meetups, when traveling.

If you are worried about the ethics of using a company laptop to do personal work, you might be taking it a bit far, what damage does this do to the company?

If you are worried about the company claiming rights over your personal work, then it is prudent.

Post reply on HN