Tesla claims insiders caused 75,000 employee data breach

Tesla blamed insider wrongdoing for a data breach that affected over 75,000 employees.

Tesla, owned by Elon Musk, filed a data breach notice with Maine‘s attorney general after an investigation found that two former employees leaked over 75,000 personal data to a foreign media outlet.

In the notice, Tesla data privacy officer Steven Elentukh stated that two former Tesla employees stole the data and shared it with the media outlet, violating Tesla’s IT security and data protection policies.

This data contains 75,735 current and former employees’ names, addresses, phone numbers, employment records, and Social Security numbers.

Tesla said two former employees gave Handelsblatt the data. In the notice, the outlet assured Tesla that it would not publish the information and is “legally prohibited from using it inappropriately.”

In May, Handelsblatt reported that Tesla had suffered a “massive” breach exposing employee data and customer car complaints.

The publication obtained over 23,000 internal “Tesla Files,” containing 100 gigabytes of confidential data. This included employee personal information, customer bank details, production secrets, and Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) complaints.

The leak included Musk’s SSN, according to Handelsblatt.

Tesla sued the employees accused of the data breach and seized their devices. Tesla said it obtained court orders barring former employees from using, accessing, or disclosing the data, subject to criminal penalties.

This follows Reuters‘ April report that Tesla employees shared sensitive customer car images. Employees shared “invasive” car camera footage between 2019 and 2022.