Tesla blamed insider wrongdoing for breach affecting 75,000 employees

Tesla notified the Maine attorney general in August 2023 that a data breach had exposed the personal information of 75,735 current and former employees. The carmaker attributed the incident to insider wrongdoing rather than an external intrusion.

In the notification, Tesla data privacy officer Steven Elentukh said an investigation determined that two former employees had misappropriated the information in violation of the company's IT security and data protection policies, and had shared it with a media outlet. That outlet was the German business newspaper Handelsblatt, which had received roughly 100 gigabytes of Tesla material comprising more than 23,000 internal documents and published an analysis in May 2023. The Record reported that Tesla learned of the leak on 10 May 2023, when Handelsblatt informed the company.

The exposed employee data included names, addresses, telephone numbers, employment records and Social Security numbers. TechCrunch reported that Elon Musk's Social Security number was among the leaked records. The wider trove also contained customer bank details, production information and thousands of customer complaints about Tesla's driver assistance systems.

Handelsblatt said it would not publish the personal information and was legally barred from using it improperly. Tesla sued the two former employees, obtained court orders to seize electronic devices believed to hold the data, and secured injunctions prohibiting further use, access or dissemination of it, subject to criminal penalties. Tesla also wrote to affected employees.