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Tesla is suing a recently hired software engineer who the company claims stole critical automated software from its WARP Drive ERP system.
Tesla WARP command
While most automakers use well-known third-party enterprise software like SAP, Tesla instead decided to build their own from scratch.
Longtime Tesla Chief Information Officer Jay Vijayan, who quietly left in January 2016, is credited with leading the development of the system, which Tesla calls “Warp.”
Vijayan discussed what drove them to develop their “Warp” system in-house during an interview with CIO Insight in 2014:
Elon’s vision is to build a vertically integrated organization where the flow of information is seamless between departments and where we have a closed feedback loop for our clients. By doing this, we can deliver the best product, service, and overall experience to our customers in the fastest possible way, while still operating effectively as a business to bring this vision to life, we needed simple and central operation. which could connect all departments and enable transparent information flow between departments. Again, we couldn’t find a single software on the market that met this need.
Elon Musk has since pushed his companies to develop even more new enterprise engineering systems for use in his multiple businesses.
For example, we previously reported that Tesla and SpaceX share a custom software platform developed for materials research.
WARP integrates a lot of important backend software that automates many processes for Tesla, from purchasing to manufacturing to inventory.
Someone is trying to steal Tesla’s software
In a new case filed with the Northern District Court of California, Tesla claims that a newly hired software engineer, Alex Khatilov, stole his WARP Drive software.
Tesla writes in the lawsuit:
“Tesla hired the defendant as a software automation engineer on December 28, 2020. Within three days, he began stealing thousands of highly confidential software files from Tesla’s secure internal network, transferring them to his cloud storage account staff on Dropbox, to which Tesla does not have access or visibility. The files are made up of “scripts” of proprietary software code that Tesla has spent years of engineering building. These scripts, when executed, automate a wide range of functions across Tesla’s business. Only a few Tesla employees even have access to these files; and as a member of that group, the defendant took advantage of this access to downloaded files unrelated to his work. “
The automakers seem to have strong evidence that Khatilov uploaded the scripts incorrectly.
Tesla’s infosec team got access to the engineer’s Dropbox account where they found the files that have no activity:
“Tesla’s information security staff detected the defendant’s unauthorized download on January 6, 2021 and confronted him that day and questioned him. During this interview, he said on several occasions that he had transferred only a few personal administrative documents. After being invited, he allowed Tesla investigators to view his Dropbox account, where they discovered the defendant’s claims were outright lies: Tesla investigators found thousands upon thousands of confidential Tesla computer scripts in its Dropbox. The accused then claimed that he somehow “forgot” the thousands of other files he had stolen (almost certainly another lie). Worse yet, it became apparent that the accused brazenly attempted to destroy the evidence by hastily deleting the Dropbox client and other files early in the interview when investigators attempted to gain remote access to his computer.
Tesla employs a team of quality assurance engineers who help identify business tasks to automate based on feedback from Tesla business leaders. Engineers write computer scripts in Python (a computer programming language) to automate these tasks and test automated processes to make sure they are working properly. These scripts are unique to Tesla and run on WARP Drive, the backend software for most of Tesla’s businesses.
The development of this complex system is expensive and time consuming. Tesla has spent approximately 200 man-years of work developing the QA scripts – the cumulative hours the QA engineering team has spent over the past twelve years. The work of engineers is also guided by Tesla’s business leaders, who identify tasks to automate – another large and valuable investment of his time.
Tesla is seeking damages to be determined at trial and an injunction to prevent the defendant from sharing information with other parties.
Here is the full complaint filed with the court:
This is not the first time Tesla has turned to court for failing to protect its trade secrets from former employees who allegedly stole important information.
Tesla sued employees who they said stole the autopilot source code, then went to Xpeng, a Chinese electric vehicle maker.
The automaker has also sued Zoox and is currently involved in a lawsuit with Rivian over similar allegations of intellectual property theft.
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