An Employee In Giga Fremont Is Fired After Sabotaging Part Of The Tesla Factory

An employee working inside the Tesla Fremont factory was apparently fired following accusations from the company that he had tried to sabotage part of the production process. He later tried to cover his tracks by destroying a computer from the factory. He even blamed the incident on somebody else.

Tesla Internal Memo
Tesla’s legal chief Al Prescott gave more details in a company email “Two weeks ago, our IT and InfoSec teams determined than [sic] an employee had maliciously sabotaged a part of the Factory". He continued the internal memo saying that "Their quick actions prevented further damage and production was running smoothly again a few hours later.”

Not the first attack
This strange behaviour seems to be becoming a trend: last month a Tesla employee was offered money by a Russian if he planted malicious software into Tesla systems. The motive of behind these attacks seems to be very different, the Russian planned to obtain money through ransomware while the employee recently fired doesn't seem to have any motive other than that of disrupting company production.

Tesla hasn't reacted to the mishap publicly, the only information we have comes from this internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. Tesla's current production has been steadily increasing at a fast rate throughout different company factories.

Tesla takes action
To conclude his email Prescott stated that Tesla“ place tremendous trust in our employees and value everyone’s contribution”. He then took a very defensive tone: “However, whatever the personal motivations of the attacker were, these are crimes, violations of our code of conduct, and are unfair to other employees. We will take aggressive action to defend the company and our people.”

One can only wonder why somebody would try and do such a thing to the positively aimed company. With the nature of Tesla's products, it needs to be even more aware than most companies regarding security issues: they are both susceptible to software attacks as well as hardware.

Tesla should be extra careful
Tesla Autopilot is partly responsible for a driver's life so the company should be especially security-aware.
What do you think the motive was behind this attack? What measures do you think the company should take regarding security? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
If you can't get enough of Tesla here is a link to my latest article.

Source for this article

Guillaume Humbert a Torque News automotive journalist covering Tesla news. "The way he first heard about Tesla was when he accidentally found a livestream of one of Tesla's cars back in 2018. It may sound boring, except this car was cruising in space. Since then Humbert has been following the EV automaker closely. Any of Tesla's innovations make the future look environmentally more friendly. "I am now trying to share the hope Tesla spread and inspire others through my articles," says Humbert whom you can follow on Twitter at Thinking Enthusiast.