Disturbing story about Apple. According to CNBC yesterday Xiaolang Zhanga former employee of the company, yes he is found guilty in front of the federal court of San Jose. The man was arrested by federal agents in July 2018 just as he was about to board a flight from San Jose to China. And he had been accused of stealing files containing secrets about the Apple Car division. Pleading guilty, Zhang now faces conviction up to 10 years in prison it’s a fine of $ 250,000.
Apple Car: Former engineer admits stealing secret documents from the division
On November 14th we will finally know the sentence concerning the case of Xiaolang Zhang. For its part, Apple said the former engineer downloaded a 25-page internal document containing technical drawings of a printed circuit board for a self-driving vehicle. And it is assumed that he took reference manuals and PDFs that contained descriptions of Apple’s automotive prototypes and prototype requirements. As a hardware engineer on the Apple Car team, Zhang managed to steal the most interesting documents on the project. And delicate, let us tell you.
Although in the indictment documents drawn up by the FBI in 2018, it is said that 5000 Apple employees they were aware of the project at the time, and that 2700 had access to the materials and databases of the project. Apparently, internal software helps the company keep track of employees who are aware of a particular project. Finding the “bad apple”, therefore, is not that difficult. When Zhang asked for paternity leave and went to China, without returning anytime soon, Apple immediately had some doubts. On that occasion, the engineer said that he would work for the Chinese electric vehicle company Xmotors, and the Cupertino company immediately moved to block the its access to the Apple network.
Unfortunately, Apple made this move after Zhang accessed the company’s databases to download Apple Car documents and information. The engineer was also caught red-handed by Apple’s CCTV system just as he removed the circuit boards and a Linux server from the lab. That he is guilty, therefore, is more than evident.