Apple autonomous driving tech secrets stolen by ex-engineer, feds say

A former Apple engineer has been charged by the US Division of Justice for stealing and trying to steal commerce secrets and techniques from his employer. The indictment was unsealed by a federal courtroom in California as a part of a collection of circumstances arising from a brand new collaboration by authorities companies to crack down on “efforts by hostile nation-states to illicitly purchase delicate US expertise to advance their authoritarian regimes and facilitate human rights abuses.”

In line with DOJ, Weibao Wang was employed by Apple as a software program engineer in 2016, the place he labored on the corporate’s secretive autonomous driving undertaking, also referred to as Mission Titan. However 18 months later, Wang accepted a job engaged on autonomous driving with one other firm—one headquartered in China. The indictment says he waited 4 extra months to inform Apple he was leaving.

The DOJ says that after Wang’s closing day at Apple in 2018, the corporate discovered that he had “accessed giant quantities of delicate proprietary and confidential data within the days main as much as his departure.” A search of Wang’s residence in Mountain View, California, turned up giant portions of Apple’s knowledge, and that night Wang flew from San Francisco to Guangzhou on a one-way ticket.

Wang has been charged with six counts of stealing or trying to steal commerce secrets and techniques. He faces as much as 10 years in jail and as much as $250,000 in fines for every rely.

The Disruptive Know-how Strike Drive, which is led by the DOJ and Division of Commerce, additionally introduced two circumstances in opposition to “alleged procurement networks” serving to the Russian army and intelligence providers; one other case involving a software program engineer stealing commerce secrets and techniques from a US firm for a Chinese language competitor; and a fifth case regarding a Chinese language community trying to offer Iran with isostatic graphite for the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

“Defending delicate American expertise—like supply code for ‘good’ automotive manufacturing gear or objects used to develop quantum cryptography—from being illegally acquired by our adversaries is why we stood up the Disruptive Know-how Strike Drive,” stated Matthew Axelrod, assistant secretary for export enforcement on the Division of Commerce. “The Strike Drive actions introduced at the moment mirror the core mission of our Export Enforcement crew—protecting our nation’s most delicate applied sciences out of the world’s most harmful palms.”