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- Hacker News
- > We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from [...]
I'll be the first one to admit, that got a hearty laugh out of me. Never miss an opportunity to market your models I guess.
by Topfi - > The man arrested for planting a secret recording device at OpenAI's headquarters is a Venture Partner of a VC firm alongside the son of a senior Saudi intelligence official:by ks2048
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50078141Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested Friday and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications.by delichon- > We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from
Did OpenAI do a marketing bit in the middle of an espionage accusation?
by minimaxir - > "Scott Schelble, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, said the agency is committed to protecting sensitive research and proprietary technology."
While the headlines and quotes seem designed to imply sophisticated industrial espionage, potentially by a state-level actor, what's public so far isn't adding up that way.
1. You're not going to get much actionable research material on proprietary technologies by audio bugging what's said in an executive conference room. That's what you'd do if you were after economic or deal negotiation info.
2. Hard to imagine a state-level actor buying a ~$15-$35 hobbyist ESP32 board from Seeed Studio (I've ordered a couple from there for home automation myself) and then asking a public chatbot for set up instructions.
3. They say he was an "engineer" who'd been there ~15 months. If you're an actual engineer at OAI and past the 1 year cliff, you're probably already sitting on RSUs likely to be worth at least $1M after OAI's IPO - and maybe much more. That's a lot of incentive to not get fired and probably makes you pretty hard to recruit as an internal mole for cash.
by mrandish - This guy previously worked at Meta from 2017 to 2022 on Data Infrastructure projects.
I expect Meta are running an audit right now to figure out if he was involved in espionage back then as well.
by simonw - I am a bit confused by Figure 3. Do they really have a surveillance camera angled just right to capture a photo of someone between the monitor and the wall that supports it?
Here is a direct link to Figure 3:
https://assets.sfstandard.com/image/994911177489/image_bfl33...
by dustfinger - These are not very smart spies:
> A chatbot account tied to Alfozan’s spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30 about building, installing, obscuring, and remotely accessing a recording device, prosecutors said. Queries included how to “build a continuous audio recorder” and “encrypt the SD card,” prosecutors claimed. On Sept. 27 and 28, the account asked about the specific device that was later found, including its unique MAC address.
by simonw