One of the theories voiced about how a former Apple employee may have accessed confidential documents after leaving the company to join OpenAI has been dispelled by a court filing.
It has been suggested that access to the documents may have been inadvertent due to a seemingly messy iCloud arrangement for Apple employees – but the company says this is not the case …
A quick recap
Apple last month filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of stealing trade secrets related to hardware projects. One focus of the claims related to a former Apple employee called Chang Liu, who moved to OpenAI. Here’s a brief timeline of events:
- July 10: Apple sues OpenAI, accusing former Apple employees of systematically stealing Apple trade secrets to benefit future OpenAI hardware
- July 10: OpenAI responds with a brief denial
- July 14: OpenAI provides an updated response, saying it has seen no evidence supporting Apple’s claims.
- August 3: OpenAI publishes a blog post attacking Apple’s lawsuit
- August 4: Apple applies for a preliminary injunction to avoid being “irreparably harmed”
The iCloud mess
OpenAI said that an information security failure by Apple was responsible for former employees retaining “unwanted” access to confidential documents after their departure.
Earlier this week, The Information carried a report indicating that this was a reference to a messy iCloud situation.
It says that while Apple removes access to company-managed iCloud folders, it’s likely that many documents will have been shared with the personal accounts of Apple employees – and they not only continue to have access to these after their departure but may also receive pushed updates to these.
In other words, former employees may be pushed updates to confidential documents on their personal devices without any wrongdoing on their part.
Apple says this didn’t play a role
However, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out that Apple specifically says in its filing that the documents in question were not stored on iCloud.
Gruber says this is extremely likely to relate to the cloud storage service Box, which is widely used by Apple.
9to5Mac’s Take
At present, this is all a matter of claims and counterclaims. We’ll need to wait for the court case itself to separate fact from fiction.
The messy iCloud situation, however, does appear to be tacitly acknowledged by Apple. The apparent goal of this arrangement is to avoid the need for Apple employees to carry two iPhones – personal and work. While this is understandable, it does seem to create a significant security hole.
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