Elon Musk used ingenious method to identify Tesla employee who leaked confidential information – News

Elon Musk appeared to make an example of a former employee suspected of leaking confidential information by devising a rather ingenious method to catch him.

Elon Musk may be the world’s most talkative billionaire.

The man regularly interacts with fans and enemies on Twitter and reveals previously unknown stories.

In fact, Musk is often only too happy to share stories about what’s going on at one of his many companies.

The entrepreneur regularly posts updates and achievements for the world to see, but there are apparently some details he wants to keep secret and a former Tesla employee stopped him.

In 2008, five years after Tesla was founded, there was a person who allegedly leaked confidential information.

As you can imagine, this would be frustrating for any company, so Musk came up with a pretty clever way to catch the person.

A curious Twitter user asked Musk for more information about the leak in a post on Twitter in 2022, when he tagged the founder and wrote: “Elon, how did you catch this employee in 2008 who leaked Tesla’s confidential data and to “The news agency sold it?”

Musk responded that it was an “interesting story” before revealing the ingenious method his team used to figure out who was responsible for passing on the information.

He explained: “We sent seemingly identical emails to everyone, but each was actually encoded with one or two spaces between sentences, forming a binary signature that identified the leaker.”

By identifying the same signature in the leaked information, Musk was able to track down the person responsible.

Elon Musk said he came up with the idea himself. (X/@elonmusk)

Users praised the plot as “smart,” and one person asked Musk who came up with the plot.

Musk responded that the method was all his, although it falls into the “canary trap” category.

This method involves creating multiple versions of a confidential document and sharing them with different suspects, making it easier to identify which version was leaked.

After the case was resolved, the person responsible for leaking the confidential information was understandably fired from Tesla.

Or, as Musk put it, they were “invited to further their careers elsewhere.”

However, Musk refrained from taking legal action against those responsible.

Musk explained his decision by saying that he was simply “too busy trying to survive at that point.”

Musk may be on firmer ground now when it comes to his “survival,” but his ability to catch his leaker last time will hopefully prevent one of his employees from trying to trick him again in the future.