Tesla says two ex-employees behind May data breach

Two former Tesla employees were behind a data breach that compromised personal information of more than 75,000 people including staff, the electric carmaker said in a legal disclosure. 

Data exposed by the breach was leaked to German media outlet Handelsblatt, Steven Elentukh, Tesla’s data privacy officer, said in a submission to Maine’s attorney general office. 

Handelsblatt told the carmaker that it had received confidential information, which included identifiable information like name, address, phone number and social security numbers, Tesla said in the submission dated Aug. 18. 

At the time, Tesla identified the employees who leaked the data, filed lawsuits against them and seized their devices, the company said. 

Companies in the United States are required to report data breaches over a certain magnitude to authorities and the law varies from state to state. 

This Tesla breach comes after Reuters reported in April that groups of Tesla employees privately shared via internal messaging systems customer information, including videos and images recorded through car cameras. 

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)