If you ever want to go behind your company's back and leak sensitive information, you best make sure that company isn't Tesla. Or worse yet, that your boss isn't Tesla founder, Elon Musk.
One daring Tesla employee discovered this the hard way when Musk devised a genius strategy to unmask them.
Typically, tweets to big-shot CEOs like Elon Musk get lost in the Twitterverse (or Xverse now), as you'd be competing to be seen against his following of 164 million.
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But one lucky X user managed to grab Musk's attention by asking about his Tesla employee. And Elon replied.
Vaibhav Balghare (@NASAEarthMars) asked Elon Musk on X how he managed to catch his Tesla employee who was selling 'confidential data' about the automotive company.
Musk summarised his clever method to reveal the culprit: "We sent what appeared to be identical emails to all, but each was actually coded with either one or two spaces between sentences, forming a binary signature that identified the leaker."
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To those of you who maybe don't know, this method of exposing leaked information is known as a canary trap. It involves creating multiple versions of a sensitive document and giving them to different suspects, making it easier to spot which version gets leaked. That's quite a weapon of espionage!
Once the case was sold - and the binary signature was cracked - Musk decided against legal action, stating that he was 'too busy trying to survive at the time'. This definitely doesn't reflect the persona of the billionaire Tesla founder we know today.
However, this case happened during the worldwide 2008 recession. Back then, Tesla was in a completely different financial situation than the one we see it in today. In fact, Tesla neared bankruptcy on Christmas Eve that year after what was recorded to be a 'crazy tough year'.
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The Tesla staff member did however get the boot. Though, Musk put it in a lighter tone in that 'they were invited to further their career elsewhere.' Whether that's actually how it went down behind Tesla doors, we may never know...
Musk may have revealed his secret method behind revealing his disloyal employees, but it certainly sends a clear message both current Tesla staff and potential future hires: leaking sensitive information isn't easy, especially in the digital world.
And you certainly won't get away with it if your boss is as tech savvy as Elon Musk.