Tesla is suing oil industry exec for impersonating Elon Musk to get confidential information

[Morgen]

[QUOTE]Ironically, the company is called ‘Quest Integrity‘. On its website, it lists clients like BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil, among others. The executive in question accused of having impersonated Musk is Todd Katz, who is listed as Chief Finacial Officer on the company’s website.

In his bio, he claims to have worked at “several leading Wall Street investment banks, including Morgan Stanley, and most recently, as a Director at Merrill Lynch.”

In the suit filed today in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County against Todd Katz, the Quest Integrity Group, and 10 John Does, Tesla and Hueston Hennigan LLP, the firm representing the automaker, claim that Katz registered the email address “[e-mail]” and sent the following email to Jason Wheeler, Tesla’s CFO, on August 3:
[QUOTE]why you so cautious w Q3/4 gm guidance on call? also what are your thoughts on disclosing M3 res#? Pros/cons from ir pov? what is your best guess as to where we actually come in on q3/4 deliverables. honest guess? no bs. thx 4 hard work prepping 4 today

em[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[url]https://electrek.co/2016/09/14/tesla-is-suing-oil-industry-exec-for-impersonating-elon-musk-to-get-delivery-numbers/[/url]

I'm not sure how this guy thought that would work.

[GordonZombie]

GG. Hopefully this idiot gets the shit kicked out of him in the courts.

[bitches]

of all things to do while illegally impersonating someone with intent of espionage, he chose to shitpost an email?

[OvB]

[quote][e-mail][/quote]

If I had a CFO that fell for that, I'd probably fire them.

[Str4fe]

That email sounds like a bad joke. Or did he really think elon speaks like that on business emails?

[hypno-toad]

Jesus, this reads like an onion article. I almost have a hard time believing that anybody could be dumb enough to think that would work without being drunk or stoned while attempting it.

[fruxodaily]

did they actually believe this would work

[editline]15th September 2016[/editline]

kinda like me emailing the CFO of any company with my @gmail email address asking for their quarterly sales predictions thinking to myself "wow theyre gonna start sending me confidential pdf's"

[proboardslol]

I would've registered a domain name similar to whichever Elon musks email is registered at (say, Tesla.com to Teslac.om)

I would've then sent a fake header, so the email says it's from [email][e-mail][/email] but then set the reply to address as [email][e-mail][/email] and hope they don't notice

Then I would've learned to type above a 3rd grade writing level so that I don't look like an uneducated dickhead

[Helix Snake]

[quote]why you so cautious w Q3/4 gm guidance on call? also what are your thoughts on disclosing M3 res#? Pros/cons from ir pov? what is your best guess as to where we actually come in on q3/4 deliverables. honest guess? no bs. thx 4 hard work prepping 4 today

em[/quote]

What the fuck kind of Wolf of Wall Street rich person drugs was this guy on?

[srobins]

This is like an Easter egg in a Deus Ex game

[Headhumpy]

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;51055053]What the fuck kind of Wolf of Wall Street rich person drugs was this guy on?[/QUOTE]

most corporate emails are actually written like that, albeit with capitalisation at the start of each sentence and "Sent from my iPhone" tagged on the end

[mutant]

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;51055082]most corporate emails are actually written like that, albeit with capitalisation at the start of each sentence and "Sent from my iPhone" tagged on the end[/QUOTE]
Yeah if you mass sent these sort of emails out to multiple large scale organisations you would probably get a few replies before they realised their error.

Less likely to work on a targeted attack though I suspect.

[OvB]

[quote=[e-mail]]hey general, whats up? just wondering what r the nuclear launch codes were again. what do you think about putin? hes pretty cool i guess. we should move our troops out of europe, wat do u think?

bo[/quote]

[editline]15th September 2016[/editline]

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;51055082]most corporate emails are actually written like that, albeit with capitalisation at the start of each sentence and "Sent from my iPhone" tagged on the end[/QUOTE]

Here's a real Elon Musk email, sent to the entire company:
[quote]May 2010 email from Elon Musk to All@spacex
"There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.

That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past.

For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a test stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name!

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum."•[/quote]

Though he's also been known to send one word "okay" replies to peoples large thought out proposals so it's probably pretty variable how well written they are. He's said in the past he prides himself in his ability to communicate via email. He does it regularly and afaik anyone in the company can email him through the company emails.

[GordonZombie]

That just makes it even worse, guy couldn't even make the effort to try and properly impersonate Elon.

[Spazi]

[quote]No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. [/quote]
So insightful. Everything I hear from this guy makes me respect him more!

[Daniel Smith]

[QUOTE=OvB;51055166][editline]15th September 2016[/editline]

Here's a real Elon Musk email, sent to the entire company:

Though he's also been known to send one word "okay" replies to peoples large thought out proposals so it's probably pretty variable how well written they are. He's said in the past he prides himself in his ability to communicate via email. He does it regularly and afaik anyone in the company can email him through the company emails.[/QUOTE]

but elon is owner of hip new tech car n space company so it make sense th@ they type like th@ 2

ds

[Mr. Someguy]

[QUOTE=proboardslol;51055012]I would've registered a domain name similar to whichever Elon musks email is registered at (say, Tesla.com to Teslac.om)

I would've then sent a fake header, so the email says it's from [email][e-mail][/email] but then set the reply to address as [email][e-mail][/email] and hope they don't notice

Then I would've learned to type above a 3rd grade writing level so that I don't look like an uneducated dickhead[/QUOTE]

I think I would have tried [email][e-mail][/email]

[Levelog]

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;51055488]I think I would have tried [email][e-mail][/email][/QUOTE]

I think it's a touch more difficult to actually send from the real Tesla domain.

[krutomisi]

yeah its easy to fake the sending address but you'll need to actually own the domain to get the response

[proboardslol]

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;51055488]I think I would have tried [email][e-mail][/email][/QUOTE]

If the reply to is the Tesla domain you won't get the email. It needs to be a domain you control

[Mr. Someguy]

[QUOTE=Levelog;51055577]I think it's a touch more difficult to actually send from the real Tesla domain.[/QUOTE][QUOTE=proboardslol;51056052]If the reply to is the Tesla domain you won't get the email. It needs to be a domain you control[/QUOTE]

I didn't think that through. This is why I'm not a hacker. :eng101s:

[1/4 Life]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/NANuyTd.png[/img]

Could we get a thing going?

[Levelog]

Granted there are a scary amount of mail servers that aren't properly configured so if you have access to any address on the domain you can send as anyone, but I doubt Tesla is one of those.

[proboardslol]

[QUOTE=1/4 Life;51056097][img]http://i.imgur.com/NANuyTd.png[/img]

Could we get a thing going?[/QUOTE]

Set the from head to [email][e-mail][/email]

"Note to self: steal secrets"

[theevilldeadII]

[QUOTE=Talishmar;51055399]So insightful. Everything I hear from this guy makes me respect him more![/QUOTE]

/sacrasm,.?!?

[Morgen]

[QUOTE=proboardslol;51055012]I would've registered a domain name similar to whichever Elon musks email is registered at (say, Tesla.com to Teslac.om)

I would've then sent a fake header, so the email says it's from [email][e-mail][/email] but then set the reply to address as [email][e-mail][/email] and hope they don't notice

Then I would've learned to type above a 3rd grade writing level so that I don't look like an uneducated dickhead[/QUOTE]

If Tesla's mail server actually lets you send to internal users with the sent from field being from an internal user from an unauthenticated user then they should probably fire their IT guy.

[Stev]

I think y'all are missing the best part here

[QUOTE]In the suit, which Forbes obtained first and you can read in full below, Tesla didn’t divulge how they managed to connect the email to Katz, Quest Integrity, and the 10 “Doe Defendants”, but they claim that “on information and belief”, they can say that Katz created the “[e-mail]” account and that 10 other individuals were involved.[/QUOTE]

This wasn't just one moron worth millions doing something dumb.

It was [I][B]Eleven[/B][/I] morons worth millions doing something dumb. Eleven motherfuckers gathered around their illuminati table and went "Elon Musk is a threat to our evil empire of greed and things captain planet had an episode about each. This must end. Any ideas?", and after hours of mulling it over and endless conspiracies that would make Machiavelli blush, this is what they came up with.

Where's my millions of dollars for being able to be alive? Clearly that's where the bar's been set here.

[Johnny on Flame]

You know, this seems really stupid because it failed, but rest assured that not everyone is well-versed in technology and this might've just worked.

But really, they should've at least researched a little bit more on how he communicates before trying to impersonate.

[Spazi]

[QUOTE=theevilldeadII;51056106]/sacrasm,.?!?[/QUOTE]

no

[Morgen]

Pretty much sums it up:
[video=youtube;T3FUVDJtiSQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3FUVDJtiSQ[/video]