An insider has breached the personal data of 75,000 Tesla employees. The Washington Examiner said the incident affected present and former Tesla employees.
The data breach occurred on May 10, and Tesla promptly began to inform the affected employees. The automaker blamed ‘insider wrongdoing’ for the breach. Among the leaked data were social security numbers. However, Tesla reported no evidence the data had been misused.
In its message to the affected workers, Tesla said, “A foreign media outlet (named Handelsblatt) informed Tesla on May 10, 2023 that it had obtained Tesla confidential information. The investigation revealed that two former Tesla employees misappropriated the information in violation of Tesla’s IT security and data protection policies and shared it with the media outlet. The outlet has stated that it does not intend to publish the personal information, and in any event, is legally prohibited from using it inappropriately.”
Tesla added that two staff members have been identified as alleged culprits and sued in court.
Tesla is offering 12 months of IdentityWorks credit monitoring and identity theft services from Experian. The company reported 128,000 employees last year. It is very popular with job applicants, receiving 3.6 million applications last year alone.
Earlier this year, German authorities started investigating Tesla’s Giga Berlin for alleged data protection violations.
