Apple Accuses Former Engineer of Taking Vision Pro Secrets To Snap (theregister.com) 33
Apple has filed (PDF) a lawsuit against former Vision Pro engineer Di Liu, accusing him of stealing thousands of confidential files related to his work on Apple's augmented reality headset for the benefit of his new employer Snap. The company alleges Liu misled colleagues about his departure, secretly accepted a job offer from Snap, and attempted to cover his tracks by deleting files -- actions Apple claims violated his confidentiality agreement. The Register reports: Liu secretly received a job offer from Snap on October 18, 2024, a role the complaint describes as "substantially similar" to his Apple position, meaning Liu waited nearly two weeks to resign from Apple, per the lawsuit. "Even then, he did not disclose he was leaving for Snap," the suit said. "Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu continued access had he told the truth." Liu allegedly copied "more than a dozen folders containing thousands of files" from Apple's filesystem to a personal cloud storage account, dropping the stolen bits in a pair of nested folders with the amazingly nondescript names "Personal" and "Knowledge."
Apple said that data Liu copied includes "filenames containing confidential Apple product code names" and files "marked as Apple confidential." Company research, product design, and supply chain management documents were among the content Liu is accused of stealing. The complaint also alleges that Liu deleted files to conceal his activities, a move that may hinder Apple's ability to determine the full scope of the data he exfiltrated. "Mr. Liu additionally took actions to conceal his theft, including deceiving Apple about his job at Snap, and deleting files from his Apple-issued computer that might have let Apple determine what data Mr. Liu stole," the complaint noted.
Whatever he has, Apple wants it back. The company demands a jury trial on a single count of breach of contract under a confidentiality and intellectual property agreement Liu was bound to. It also asks the court to compel Liu to return all misappropriated data, award damages to be determined at trial, and reimburse Apple's costs and attorneys' fees.
Apple said that data Liu copied includes "filenames containing confidential Apple product code names" and files "marked as Apple confidential." Company research, product design, and supply chain management documents were among the content Liu is accused of stealing. The complaint also alleges that Liu deleted files to conceal his activities, a move that may hinder Apple's ability to determine the full scope of the data he exfiltrated. "Mr. Liu additionally took actions to conceal his theft, including deceiving Apple about his job at Snap, and deleting files from his Apple-issued computer that might have let Apple determine what data Mr. Liu stole," the complaint noted.
Whatever he has, Apple wants it back. The company demands a jury trial on a single count of breach of contract under a confidentiality and intellectual property agreement Liu was bound to. It also asks the court to compel Liu to return all misappropriated data, award damages to be determined at trial, and reimburse Apple's costs and attorneys' fees.
Secret Audio Recording Transcript (Score:1, Funny)
"Hello, Snap CEO, my new employer. Here is Apple's Vision Pro secret: Charge $3,500 for something people normally wouldn't pay more than $500. You're welcome."
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How would you exfiltrate data? (Score:2)
I simply turn off WiFi, setup a local network, plug in Ethernet and scp files to an ssh server. I also scp all of my files not just some to look like I am taking a backup. I also do this monthly from day 1 and then stop the moment I plan to get another job for some sweet plausible deniability. Not that I have ever done anything like this..
Re:How would you exfiltrate data? (Score:4, Interesting)
Eventually your device will go back online and whatever EDR or DLP your company has installed will send the offline logs to a server, same logs which are generated when online. How big do you think the ring buffer is for those logs?
You might have gotten away with it in past, it suggests your employer was utterly incompetent if they didn't notice activity like this.
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EDR is sometimes all you have to know something happened. Waiting for DLP to note a loss can be too late if there is behavior which isn't currently being flagged as suspect. I've seen cases where employees attempted to establish a new baseline of behavior which EDR caught before they got around to leaking things and were told by management how they should be doing backups of their work machine and to stop the ways they were trying. If it happens again, then you have stronger reason to think they are up to n
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The way they used the "Crowdstrike Outage" to hide crimes was to reboot into a WinPE environment and 'do recovery' while wiping evidence.
I haven't used a Mac in a while but it used to be booting from external media was easy.
I can imagine ways to require keys from secure boot and hardware to decrypt the main drive but I haven't seen those deployed myself.
So, reboot from external, copy data, reboot normally.
Somebody can tell me if Apple already provides a way to avoid this.
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Macs have indeed changed, it was certainly doable on Intel units, though some options could be turned off from afar to make it harder. With Apple Silicon + FileVault + disabled external boot, it's pretty much impossible unless you've an insider who knows the needed keys, which should be safeguarded well away from easy single person access.
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seriously IT let you just backup critical files out of the corporate environment? wow now that is an enterprise that is cyber cluster fuck waiting to happen.
On the other hand, tell the IT manager that it's some form of cloud backup and it'll be just fine.
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I simply turn off WiFi, setup a local network, plug in Ethernet and scp files to an ssh server. I also scp all of my files not just some to look like I am taking a backup. I also do this monthly from day 1 and then stop the moment I plan to get another job for some sweet plausible deniability. Not that I have ever done anything like this..
Given how good Apple's security is, he probably walked right out the front door with a giant box saying "company secrets".
Given how small portable storage is (assuming he couldn't just transfer it electronically) it's ridiculously easy to transport data. Unless the data can only be accessed from a secure, air-gapped network that has no USB ports (or other form of data transfer ports) available, no wireless and you have to ware a disposable coverall to enter (which is burned on exit) and every single mom
flop (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Well duh, Snap is owned by tencent (Score:3)
There is nothing further to say.
CGI (Score:2)
No shit he didn't tell them right away... (Score:3)
most people don't have a full break between personal and work even on a work computer account... there will be things that are personal... research you did online, any manner of things that aren't company property. Who wouldn't want to have time between changing gigs to ensure your shit is correctly separated.. your accounts are separated... (i.e. using work email to register for things you might want to retain access to, etc....)
If they had "confidential" files copied... guess apple doesn't support DLP... to let confidential files be copied to a random USB at that level (engineering) is beyond stupid.... if all they have are file names that they think he may have copied... then this is a really stupid game they're playing. Wonder what their "confidentiality agreement" actually states, and curious how enforceable shit like this...
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Some people marry for money
Some people marry for lust
Some people marry for power
And some people marry because, deep down, they hate themselves
Vision Pro Secrets? (Score:3)
When a product is as bad a failure as Vision Pro is, are there really any secrets of value? What secrets could he possibly have stolen that would have any value at all? "Overprice things in the hopes of creating value," isn't a secret. "Provide no actual value," isn't really a secret either. "Use displays near eyes," seems to have some prior art sprawled all over the tech world. Just what secrets could there possibly be?
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Plenty. Enough that he risked it, and tried to cover his tracks. I know you're just taking the opportunity to shit on Apple and get a pat on the back for it, but painting it as 100% failure from top to bottom just isn't reasonable. Surface level focusing on prior art has you described deliberately misses the point. By that logic there will never be another significant innovation in cars, since prior art at getting from place to place is in the can.
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Plenty. Enough that he risked it, and tried to cover his tracks. I know you're just taking the opportunity to shit on Apple and get a pat on the back for it, but painting it as 100% failure from top to bottom just isn't reasonable. Surface level focusing on prior art has you described deliberately misses the point. By that logic there will never be another significant innovation in cars, since prior art at getting from place to place is in the can.
The only interesting thing about the hardware, IMO, would be details about the internals of the custom silicon used for the image pipeline. And even that probably isn't all that interesting. Beyond that, The hardware is just a glorified iPad and a Quest 3 bolted together, with slightly higher resolution marred by slightly worse optics.
Most of what makes Vision Pro interesting is the software, and that isn't fully baked, making it somewhat less interesting than it otherwise would be.
It's not that Vision Pr
High priced secrets? (Score:2)
So he has many of the trade secrets to build the device they couldn't sell. It seems Apple would be happy to let a competitor burn through a lot of cash building a similar product.
"award damages to be determined at trial, and reimburse Apple's costs and attorneys' fees"
That kind of retaliation would make me worry about being an Apple employee. If they think you wronged them, they can sue you into debt for life.
"Whatever he has, Apple wants it back." (Score:2)
That isn't how copying files works.