Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company benefited from the theft of confidential trade secrets by a former Apple engineer who allegedly exploited a security vulnerability to access proprietary information after leaving the company.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that former Apple systems electrical engineer Chang Liu accessed the company's internal network weeks after joining OpenAI by exploiting what Apple described as a previously unknown authentication flaw.
According to the complaint, Liu allegedly downloaded dozens of confidential hardware-related files containing information on unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications and proprietary project data.
Apple said the vulnerability was a zero-day authentication bug, allowing Liu to continue accessing its internal network after his employment ended. The company said it has since fixed the flaw and terminated his access after discovering the alleged breach.
The complaint also alleges that Liu retained his Apple-issued work laptop after leaving the company and used the Apple-issued laptop of another employee, Yu-Ting Peng, while she was still employed at Apple. Peng later joined OpenAI.
Apple claims Liu discovered he could still access the company's cloud-based engineering repository after leaving the company but failed to report the security vulnerability or delete the software that enabled the access, as required under his employment agreement.
According to the filing, Liu messaged Peng after accessing Apple's network, writing: "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny."
Apple said an internal review of its server logs found that Liu was the only former employee to exploit the vulnerability, although it acknowledged the flaw could have allowed a small number of others to access its systems.
The company has demanded a jury trial and is seeking damages over the alleged theft of trade secrets.
OpenAI has previously said it has "no interest in other companies' trade secrets."