A former employee of the Cupertino tech giant has pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets.
Xiolang Zhang allegedly admitted to stealing trade secrets from Apple’s Project Titan, and under US law, He faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000..
Background
Zhang joined Apple in 2015 to work on the production project of Material there Software of the Apple car; however, after three years, the chinese engineer cut ties with the tech giant join Xpeng, a start autonomous vehicles based in China.
The former Titan project engineer was part of the IT team. More specifically, he devoted himself to the development of printed circuits facilitating the analysis of the sensors of the autonomous vehicle.
Mac Rumors Apple gave you access to its database of sensitive files.
In 2018, Zhang had traveled to China after receiving parental leave, but when it was about to expire, she informed the company that she would not be returning.
The iPhone maker claims that at the time of its release, the former engineer had an evasive behavior, which has set off alarm bells within Apple’s new product security team. In this way, meanwhile, they investigated their activity on the network and with Apple devices which were returned to him once he officially left the premises.
Later, after Zhang left the company in April 2018, Apple discovered that with his departure, the former engineer took with him sensitive data for the Titan project.
Former engineer stole almost 25 gigabytes of information
Tech portal The Verge reported that Zhang had been created with around 24GB of datawhich they described as “very problematic”.
the old engineer transferred files via Airdrop to his ex-wife’s MacBook, but in addition, those in Cupertino also point out that the former employee took with him printed circuit boards and a server from the Project Titan lab.
Among the files that the former employee had downloaded, it was in particular a question of a 25-page document containing technical diagrams of a printed circuit for Apple car. In addition to the information transferred on the prototypes and other Material test.
Apple vs. Xiolang Zhang
After Apple reported the events, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) charged Zhang with stealing trade secrets and was arrested shortly after while apparently trying to flee the country.
Zhang pleaded not guilty to the charges shortly after being charged in 2018.. However, on August 22, 2022, he accepted the charges as part of a plea deal to reduce his sentence. CNBC says Zhang’s deal is already sealed, but despite that, it hasn’t been made public as sentencing is slated for November.
In the same way, Apple is in a legal fight against Jizhong Chenanother former Titan Project engineer who was also accused of stealing trade secrets in 2019.
But there is not much information about this case yet, since it is still in its infancy, but what is known is that Chen has not pleaded guilty and, Curiously, is represented by the same lawyer as Zhang.
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