1y ago

Nvidia sued after senior employee accidentally showed off confidential files taken from previous employer during a video meeting

fortune.com Nvidia sued after senior employee accidentally showed off confidential files taken from previous employer during a video meeting

French tech firm Valeo accused Nvidia of using stolen information as a "blueprint for future corporate espionage."

Nvidia sued after senior employee accidentally showed off confidential files taken from previous employer during a video meeting

Seems an engineer stole source code, docs, presentations...etc related to car technology.

33 comments

I've seen the same thing first hand with people in senior leadership roles at big companies.
Not a lot of upsides to whistleblow this stuff.
- It's just the same "How to succeed" PowerPoint preseo floating around after hundreds of logo changes. Rumours say a temp made it back in 2007 and that's why it's still 4:3.
  
  Way earlier than 2007. I saw one of those "how to succeed" PowerPoint presentations back in '98 as a "Junior IT Manager." I quickly realized why both of my coworkers in line ahead of me refused the promotion.
  Clippy can suffer the fate of a flammenwerfer.
  
  Does it have ricey WordArt?

That’s why I always share individual windows, never the whole screen. My desktop is nobody’s business.

If a person breaks into a Industrial Plant and steals $10000 worth of computer hardware and the software that was on it, they go to jail for a long time during which they are not allowed much if any "profits"/income. When a Corporation steals $100million, they pay the other company and gain even more money if they are in market dominate position.
This exchange of money from thief to victim however misses compensating the most aggrieved party, the marketplace > users > you. Really overall though, Civilization loses.
The problem with the Corporate Legal System is that once something like this is found to happen, morally, ethically, and to secure the future of Civlization, the thieving company should be shutdown in 6mos and all assets put up for auction.
Corporations have legal "personhood", but it seems to be just the best parts. Since this is well known to nVidia CEO Jensen Huang maybe he just said to himself, "It's just Business".
- Did nvidia encourage him to copy the material? Did they hire him because he had stolen it?
  Or did they hire him because he used the material to appear better than he was? In which case, he defrauded both companies, and nvidia is a victim (but usually still culpable if they used stolen information)
  I'm not disagreeing with you (though there are many valid arguments against it, since it basically encourages monopolies to form, and encourages further shell corporations to insulate each other. One gets shut down, and so another branch buys them up. Nothing changes except easier to avoid punishment if they're shut down.)
  What I will say is that just because corporations can be evil, that doesn't mean they are, and it doesn't individuals can't be evil too. I don't know who did what when or why, but I wouldn't look past a single idiot's greed just because evil corporations are an obvious target.
  
  Your argument is valid in an abstract, logical way and I appreciate that. In the real world, it's nearly impossible for nVidia management to all the sudden gain all the secrets/features from a partner company from a man who used to work there! and not suspect something...
  Suspect theft, espionage, (employee crime) and do nothing = guilty
  Negligent incompetance/ignorance (used alot) = guilty
  Maybe nVidia did nothing as to plead ignorance and let the guy take the fall or they knew it. Either of these cases is just as criminal when morals are applied.
  Calling nVidia the victim is twisting words very badly and I'm not sure you didn't mean to do that. This is such bad press for nVidia isn't it? If I were nVidia CEO Jensen Huang I would pay people or even make comments pseudonymously. I mean, what does it take to post on Lemmy, just an email account?
  It would be ethically and competantly correct to interally investigate how now you as a Corporation (Word root: Corp = body; Corporation => Arrangement of Bodies) have all your peers features from a former employee of them and there is no way to ethically get around that. None.
  That's the same argument as another plumber who all of a sudden repaired pipes in this totally original way like you did, while you worked on the same job, after working with you. He watched you and took the idea is what happens in the real world.
  Corporate Espionage is a huge thing and it's happened all thoroughout history and maybe even now.
  Just so I'm clear in my communication, there is no case where nVidia can logically be a victim. Best case = co-conspirator.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nvidia is in hot water after one of its software engineers accidentally let a rival company—and his former employer—in on a secret: that he stole its top-secret research and took it to the trillion-dollar tech giant.
During a video call with automotive tech firm Valeo last year, the engineer, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, made a blunder when he shared his screen and showed his ex-colleagues some source code that they immediately recognized as their own.
“[Moniruzzaman] realized that his knowledge of, and exposure and access to, Valeo proprietary software, technologies, and development techniques would make him exceedingly valuable to Nvidia,” the firm said in the lawsuit.
He then stole tens of thousands of files and 6 gigabytes of source code, after which, [he] attempted to cover his tracks by subsequently removing his personal account from authorized access.”
Upon recognizing the source code and file names that were displayed on Moniruzzaman’s screen during the call, Valeo employees took a screenshot and passed it back to their employer.
Moniruzzaman, who is based in Germany, was convicted of unlawful acquisition, use, and disclosure of Valeo’s trade secrets by German authorities in September this year, according to the lawsuit.
The original article contains 1,040 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

There's a lot of blind accusations there, Valeo claims NVidia used their research but don't specify what research or even what product NVidia have used it in.
Edit: Another article explains it much better. NVidia and Valeo competed on an AI project, NVidia won the software part, then in a video call between the two to develop the project Moniruzzaman was caught with Valeo code.
- Not that blind.
  “When he minimized the PowerPoint presentation he had been sharing, however, he revealed one of Valeo’s verbatim source code files open on his computer. So brazen was Mr. Moniruzzaman’s theft, the file path on his screen still read ‘ValeoDocs.’”
  
  Ooofh that's pretty damning. 😂
  Thanks for copying that in, dang pay wall.
  
  You're completely missing my point. I'm not saying he didn't take the files - he's already been convicted of that. I'm saying Valeo have not demonstrated in any way that NVidia used the material he stole in one of their products. They claim that in the lawsuit, but provide no basis for that claim.

33 comments