Laid-off Intel employee allegedly steals 'Top Secret' files, then disappears — ex-engineer downloaded 18,000 files before vanishing
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/laid-off-intel-employee-allegedly-steals-top-secret-files-goes-on-the-run-ex-engineer-downloaded-18-000-files-before-disappearing
344 points · 60 comments · view on lemmy.world
60 Comments
kirkoman@sh.itjust.works · 206 pts · 301d
You could say they were gathering intel.
tatann@lemmy.world · 74 pts · 301d
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 301d
Touche! Nice one!
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 301d
Dojan@pawb.social · 96 pts · 301d
Good for them! I hope they won’t get caught.
More people should rebel and hurt the companies like this. They’re laying people off not because there isn’t work, but because they don’t want to pay. All of the companies doing layoffs are also hiring, only they’ve created a market of desperation so they know they can give workers shitty deals.
Intel and all the other big corpos deserve this.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 11 pts · 301d
Pretty sure this is one of those cases of chinese espionage.
Probably has been going on for a long time too.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 301d
I don't really care who is hurting large corporations as long as they're being hurt
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 5 pts · 301d
Well, we don't actually know what was taken.
Depending on the information this could be anything from basic technical information to all the state sponsored backdoor tooling they've implemented across their stack.
The former might "hurt" them on some level if chinese companies steal their designs and sell them as counterfeit, but the latter has security implications for anybody with intel gear from the poorest individuals to the wealthiest companies.
Just saying, you never know how this could impact things down the road.
Cethin@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 301d
Nah, I think the latter would be great. Sure, short term it could cause issues, though not really for the average person. China will use it to influence politics for those people maybe, but they don't have any large use for it. The US government has far more use for it in regard to them, so that's actually a threat. It would be a risk for the government and western companies.
The benefit of this being lost to China is they'd have to fix what backdoors they can, and maybe reconsider creating new ones. This is a huge benefit to American consumers. It only hurts those who asked for the backdoors in the first place, which is presumably the US government.
I don't live in China, so I'm not really worried about China's government. I live in the US, so I'm worried about the US government.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 2 pts · 300d
Zero chance of them not replacing or patching backdoors if another actor gets access.
China having a backdoor into everybody's intel systems is terrible. Nobody should have backdoors into our computers. There are no impartial, apolitical or morally or ethically positive organization out there. Bias is literally everywhere.
Cethin@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 300d
I didn't say China having it was bad. I said the US having it is significantly worse. What's China going to use it for against me? They can't arrest me or anything.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 1 pts · 300d
Use your imagination as if you're a spy agency.
Maybe they use your system to generate illicit traffic that incriminates you, and then they offer to keep it secret or fix it so long as you go along with whatever objective you might be useful for.
I literally don't care what nation it is though. They're all evil. If there's a chance for them to use anybody anywhere to further their goals, they'll take it.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 301d
In a more sane world they'd reconsider the monstrous fucking back doors
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 301d
It's just infighting among big corpos, so one corpo's loss is another's gain. Big whoop
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 301d
Good. Competition is good for the consumer.
atmorous@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 301d
Everybody laid off needs to make new companies together as well. Good ones not on stock market that are unionized
Cavemanfreak@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 301d
In cases like this it's reaaaally hard to just start up a new competitor from nothing (assets wise). Building up production is not cheap.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 301d
Dude i made a microprocessor out of some scrap wood and copper wire I found behind a dumpster.
It has a bad habit of catching fire but im pretty sure with a few billion dollars of investment ill be able to create the greatest computer chip ever made
P1nkman@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 301d
Here, I'll back you with three fiddy. Now I expect a 1758956% increase of my investment in the next 3 years, else I'll take my money elsewhere.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 301d
Deal. You fool.
Cavemanfreak@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 300d
Don't be so quick! I'll double his offer (but triple the demand for returns)
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 300d
Idiots. I'm rich, I'm fucking rich!!!!
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 301d
Just steal a bunch of their files on the way out so you have a head start.
Cavemanfreak@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 300d
The files aren't the problem. It's the production lines that are expensive, so there will be a huge cost upfront.
survirtual@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 301d
They already thought of that possibility and have taken over the legal system to mitigate. Corporate patents & NDAs will have some complaints.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 301d
There can be reverse situations (e.g. opportunistic individual delivering hard earned data from an honest company to American criminal groups) so its not black and white.
That being said "reap what you sow" can be a fair and just characterisation.
Krono@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 301d
You have better odds finding Sasquatch and a unicorn than you do finding an honest publically traded company.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world · 64 pts · 301d
Oh, no! Someone is going to get what was world leading technology if it was 8 years ago this might be a problem.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 301d
Not sure what you are refering to.
arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone · 76 pts · 301d
They're saying Intel's chips suck compared to the competition now, so the data stolen is for technology that is worse than other chips available already (or soon to be available, depending on what was stolen).
papertowels@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 300d
My money is on chinas domestic CPU production. They've been pursuing that for a while now, but have always been years behind even Intel. They're the only ones I can think of that would be able to leverage this info to significantly improve.
janus2@lemmy.zip · 63 pts · 301d
"cannot be located" lmao homie's on a tropical beach now, suckers
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 60 pts · 301d
More likely Shenzhen. Tropical beaches tend to have extradition treaties. :D
j4k3@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 301d
Havana might be nice
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 301d
Cuba may not have an extradition treaty with the US, but I somehow doubt you can just arrive there, as a relatively well known person of interest and stay there without giving the local thugs a cut.
I would speculate he is working with the CCP.
j4k3@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 301d
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 301d
It might be nice, but they don't have much of a semiconductor industry to sell the files to.
janus2@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 301d
my geography's trash cuz I'm an American moron but I thought China had at least a few tropical beaches
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 301d
They do, yeah
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 301d
Bali!
ook@discuss.tchncs.de · 21 pts · 301d
bdonvr@thelemmy.club · 11 pts · 301d
Dudes in China almost certainly
Good for him
janus2@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 301d
tropical beaches with really good public transit and bitchin noodles
arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone · 25 pts · 301d
Kind of seems like the files aren't that valuable if they're only trying to get $250k. Like that's a large amount of money for most people, but for a big company suing for its IP, that doesn't sound like that much tbh.
beeng@discuss.tchncs.de · 14 pts · 300d
Intel
insideoutside.MITM0@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 300d
Hopefully it'll be on the darkweb
Valmond@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 301d
How ho you detect someone stole files nowadays? Did they have them printed out on a bookshelf?
fonix232@fedia.io · 22 pts · 301d
Every single access is logged on such systems, regardless what kind of file hosting you use.
An employee suddenly accessing tons of files, potentially in indexing order (meaning they're either clicking through every link, every folder, every file, or are using an automated tool that does exactly the same), now that's suspicious.
Combine that with logs from their terminal, which would usually contain things like downloads, file operations, as well as external storage connection/disconnection events, and you can basically get a near perfect map of what they stole and how.
Cethin@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 301d
They knew what they stored it on, so presumably they did it in a company computer, and that computer had logging software that the company got access to (whether it automatically sends it to them or just stores it locally until needed).
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 301d
Logs
Valmond@lemmy.world · -7 pts · 301d
Who logs who reads files? And even if, who checks those logs? Gotta be a wild system.
teft@piefed.social · 12 pts · 301d
Lots of companies maintain access logs. Anything with high security you want to be able to audit who accessed what and when.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 301d
But who pays someone to check them?
teft@piefed.social · 8 pts · 301d
Normally you just have the systems admin or an automated system look into it. It depends on your security setup.
Valmond@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 301d
Yeah I guess that's the only sane way to do it. A tiny bit crazy the whole system exists, an automatic verification lights up, but only after the dude left.
Why did he have access to all that for starters, why wasn't the alarms ringing when he did it etc. seems like security at Intel is kind of wonky. 🤷🏻♀️
teft@piefed.social · 3 pts · 301d
It might just come down to they never experienced the exact type of espionage so didn’t have strong guardrails to prevent this. Hopefully some security engineers learned a lesson from this and will change their processes.
a4ng3l@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 301d
Siems and such systems are designed for that. Could be part of SOC or CSIRT. Generally all large companies have that. It’s also getting more accessible to smaller structures in the form of « as a service ». A data leak is a data leak whatever the vector so shit needs to be detected & acted upon. It’s all fun & fair games when about Intel secrets it seems but what when a dickhead steals medical data or other perso stuff ?
plyth@feddit.org · 4 pts · 301d
It would be stupid not to do so. Bigger question is, why could he download the files and leave campus?
Cypher@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 301d
Valmond@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 301d
Are you paid to check file access logs?
Cypher@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 301d
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 301d
Someone downloading full datasets that would rarely happen in the regular course of work (unless there was special projec tor some sort).
snipingsnipe@piefed.social · 5 pts · 300d
Full leaks of IME architectures would definitely a 1 on the scoreboard against us and... uh, whoever in the late-2000s/early-2010s believed it to be priority to implement this great technology for everyone! AMD PSP next please.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 4 pts · 300d
Based