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Apple says former employee exploited rare bug to download confidential files after leaving for OpenAI
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On Friday, Apple dropped the bombshell news it was suing OpenAI over the alleged theft of trade secrets, claiming that OpenAI stole Apple’s confidential data and engaged in efforts to learn proprietary information while recruiting former Apple employees. In accusing OpenAI of stealing secrets about Apple’s unreleased products, Apple revealed that a former employee allegedly siphoned reams of sensitive files from the company’s shared network folders, weeks after leaving Apple for a job at OpenAI. In its complaint, Apple says the former employee, a system electrical engineer named Chang Liu, allegedly “exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug” that allowed access to the company’s network. The bug is classified as a zero-day vulnerability, meaning that Apple had no time to fix it before it was allegedly exploited. Apple has since fixed the bug and said it terminated the employee’s access once it learned of this “security breach.” In its complaint, Apple said the bug could have allowed a “few other” people to access data on its network, but alleged that only Liu exploited the bug to steal Apple’s confidential information while no longer an employee, citing a check of its server logs. The disclosure, while light in detail, highlights the challenges that organizations face with protecting sensitive corporate data after employees no longer work there. Companies often move to immediately cut off departing staff from further access to protect any sensitive information from leaving, including inadvertently. Companies that fail to fully decommission their employees’ accounts can face future security lapses, data breaches, or malicious actions by disgruntled staff. Apple spokespeople did not respond to an email from TechCrunch with questions about the security vulnerability, how it was exploited, and when the company decommissioned the employee’s credentials. “LOL… so funny.” In the complaint, Apple alleged that Liu took “dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files” over the course of several weeks while as a new OpenAI employee. Apple said the files contained “detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.” The company claims Liu failed to return the Apple-issued work laptop he had previously used to access Apple’s network, suggesting it was once able to send and receive files from Apple’s internal systems. The complaint said that Liu allegedly claimed to have “another computer.” While he was at OpenAI, Liu also allegedly misused the access of an acquaintance, Yu-Ting Peng, a then-Apple employee who later went to work for OpenAI. Liu allegedly used Peng’s Apple-issued work laptop “while she was still employed at Apple and he was not.” Apple said that during February 2026, Liu “tried to access Apple’s network storage — a cloud-based file repository containing Apple’s confidential engineering files, project documentation, and other proprietary information.” Liu had allegedly discovered that he “still could access Apple’s network repository after leaving Apple, the result of a then-unknown authentication vulnerability.” Apple did not describe the authentication “bug” that Liu allegedly used to access Apple’s network. However, authentication bugs generally refer to flaws in the login process that allow improper access to systems or data, either because of a weakness in how the login mechanism works or due to a misconfiguration, such as overbroad permissions or not decommissioning the login credentials of a former employee. Apple wrote in its complaint that when Liu learned he had unauthorized access to Apple’s systems, he did not report the bug to Apple under his employment agreement obligations, nor did he return his Apple-issued work laptop. The complaint added that Liu also failed to “delete the program that allowed the access” to Apple’s network. The company did not say what program or app that Liu allegedly used to
· July 13, 2026 Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI is packed with a number of extraordinary allegations that paint a picture of a coordinated effort to extract confidential information from current and former Apple employees. But what’s perhaps most striking is how casually the alleged misconduct is described, including one message that reads, “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.” The 41-page complaint, which was filed on Friday, is filled with unusually detailed allegations, like this and others. Here are some that stood out the most to us. “Normalized and exemplified by leadership.” With this description of OpenAI, Apple is making it clear its lawsuit isn’t just focused on rogue employees, but that misconduct like this is part of OpenAI’s culture and is led from the top. “Rotten to its core.” Leave it to Apple to work a rotten fruit analogy into its criticism of OpenAI’s behavior in this case. The AI model maker is rumored to be working on a hardware device to challenge the iPhone, potentially a smartphone of its own. But Apple wants to stress that what OpenAI is developing was allegedly built with Apple’s trade secrets. “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” the complaint states. “This is the tip of the iceberg.” In addition to documenting the allegations against its former employees, Apple is suggesting that the alleged misconduct outlined in the complaint is only a fraction of what it will uncover after the discovery process gets underway. In discovery, corporate documents and communications, including texts and emails, are obtained, potentially uncovering other examples of this kind of behavior at OpenAI. “Discovery will expose that the misappropriation has been occurring on a scale many times greater than the several instances described below,” Apple’s complaint states. “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.” Apple says that Chang Liu, previously a senior systems electrical engineer at Apple before joining OpenAI, sent this message to an Apple employee, Yu-Ting “Alyssa” Peng, who allegedly was a conduit between Apple and OpenAI. Peng later left to join OpenAI herself, but is not a defendant in the lawsuit. Peng allegedly replied to the message, “I’m ready.” Apple claims that Liu was able to access Apple’s systems by exploiting an authentication bug, which he did from his former colleague’s Apple-issued work computer. “I still have another computer.” Liu allegedly also texted this within hours of leaving Apple, referring to another Apple computer he allegedly planned to use to access Apple’s confidential information. Apple discovered the message on his former colleague’s Apple-issued work laptop. “Didn’t even know we could take those from the office.” One of the wilder allegations is that OpenAI job candidates working at Apple were directed by OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as VP of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, to bring “actual parts” from Apple to their interviews at OpenAI for “show and tell sessions.” One candidate was surprised by the request, saying he didn’t even realize that Apple parts could be taken out of the office, Apple alleges. Apple also says employees were instructed to bring “CAD/design artifacts” and “prototypes” to interviews. Avoiding the “dreaded walkout.” Apple alleges that OpenAI coached departing Apple employees on how to evade Apple’s security procedures to reduce the chance their alleged trade secret theft would be caught. The complaint claims that OpenAI circulated an internal Apple document bearing a “Need to know” designation to new hires with details of how to avoid the “dreaded walkout,” which would immediately remove them from Apple after giving notice, instead of letting them continue to work for the typical two weeks, whic
At a spatial AI convention in Long Beach on Tuesday, Snap finally unveiled Specs, its long-awaited consumer smart glasses, and at $2,195, they don’t come cheap. Specs will be available for preorder on June 16th, with a $200 refundable deposit, and are expected to ship this fall in the US, the UK, and France. The price is well above most Meta Ray-Bans (which can run as low as $350), though still far below the Apple Vision Pro’s $3,500 starting price. Either way, it’s steep enough to put Specs out of reach for most everyday consumers. For over a decade now, Snap has been working on this device. Despite this, the last time the company released a consumer-facing version of the glasses was in 2019 — its latest iterations have been developer only. Earlier this year, Snap spun off a new company to focus exclusively on bringing the product to market. Now the glasses are finally here. So what stands out on first impression? Visually, Specs looks like a fairly normal pair of glasses — albeit a slightly bulkier, goggle-like pair. That extra bulk comes down to a key design choice: unlike some competitors, all of the computing takes place on the actual device, and it conveniently lacks a puck or tether. Specs runs on two Snapdragon processors, and it comes with up to four hours of continuous battery life, plus a charging case that extends that to 20 hours total. But what can you actually do with them? For starters, there are games, including ones that support shared multi-player sessions between two users. Snap calls this feature “EyeConnect,” and it’s activated simply by two wearers making eye contact with each other. You can also watch videos (Snap says the display offers a 51-degree field of view and 16 million colors), record point-of-view footage and, at least in theory, get work done since the glasses allow you to surf the internet, connect to productivity apps, and check your email. One standout feature is contextual AI. Look at an object and ask about it, and the glasses can pull up information on what you’re seeing — a glimpse of the kind of AI-assistant layer that’s becoming a competitive battleground in this category. The glasses come in two sizes — a 47mm model, which weighs 132 grams (approximately 4.6 ounces) and a 52 mm model, which weighs 136 grams (4.7 ounces). That makes them noticeably heavier than Meta’s Ray-Bans — the first-gen Wayfarers weigh under an ounce — but far lighter than Apple’s Vision Pro, which tips the scales at 26.4 to 28.2 ounces. There are also privacy protections. On privacy, Specs follows Meta’s lead with a built-in LED light that glows while the device is recording. The company says that users will also have control over what data is stored, synced, or deleted. When I was in Las Vegas for CES earlier this year, the Snap team let me demo an earlier version of the glasses. It was fun to play around with the apps and I found myself impressed by the contextual AI, but the device was also quite heavy and, after running for awhile, it could get hot. From the looks of it, Snap has since slimmed down the hardware, making the glasses both less obtrusive and more efficient. The bigger question is whether this decade-long innovation marathon will result in some sort of viable business for Snap. Specs enters a market that is increasingly saturated with competitors. Meta now leads with its popular Ray-Ban series, and Google has announced its own new line of AI-powered glasses. As for who these glasses are for, Snap says it’s aiming first at tech enthusiasts, developers, and studios — though at $2,200, that audience is going to need some deep pockets to match their enthusiasm. The cumbersome price highlights an ongoing dilemma for the smart glasses industry — which is that consumer interest has yet to go beyond mere curiosity to the kind of enthusiasm that can result in consistent profits. As a result, no one is really making a profit. Even the industry’s current champ — Meta — is losing tons of mo
Two years and a $250 million lawsuit later, Apple’s AI Siri revamp is on its way to your phones and laptops and even your mixed reality headset, if you happen to be one of like three people who actually uses the Apple Vision Pro. Apple revealed a slew of new information at Monday’s WWDC keynote about these long-awaited, AI-powered updates that can take advantage of the fact that our hardware is supposedly “built for Apple Intelligence.” To be honest, it’s hard for AI to impress me enough that I’ll use it in my day-to-day life. I still don’t trust LLMs to provide consistently accurate information, I find it ethically untenable (and uncool) to use AI to help me write, and I don’t feel the insatiable urge to know what I would look like as a Studio Ghibli character. But every once in a while, the promise of AI tempts me. That’s how I felt watching Apple’s Siri AI demos, which depict a world where your phone comes with an always-on, constantly-working assistant who knows everything about you and can help you keep track of all of the conversations happening on like twelve different apps on your phone at any given moment. To paraphrase Katy Perry, it feels so wrong (what are the privacy implications?), but it also feels so right (I am so overwhelmed by my phone and am begging for help parsing it all). I want Siri to be my own personal Emily from “The Devil Wears Prada” — a “second brain” that anticipates my needs before I even know what they are. I want Siri to read my texts and automatically make an event when a friend and I decide we’re going to meet up for dinner on Thursday. I want Siri to remind me when I’m walking past CVS that I have a prescription ready for pickup. If I forget to reply to an important work email, I want Siri to remind me that I didn’t write back yet. Image Credits:Apple Siri AI won’t be able to do all of that out of the box, but it’s moving in the right direction. In one example at WWDC, Justin Titi, an Apple Senior Director working on AI engineering, asks the smart assistant to remind him of the dessert that his daughter mentioned recently. Siri searches across Titi’s phone to find a text from about a month ago, when his daughter mentioned that she wanted to make coconut cookies. It’s simple, but asking Siri to find that message saves time, rather than scrolling up through an entire month of conversation looking for that one specific text. The new-and-improved Siri is designed to use “personal context,” which refers to any information you put into Apple-native apps, like iMessage, Notes, Calendar, Mail, Photos, and more. Siri will also be aware of what’s on your screen, so for example, if you scroll past a picture of a nice park on Instagram, you can ask it to find out where that park is. (We still don’t know if Siri will be able to integrate into non-native Apple apps; it seems like it might be up to the developers to make that happen.) There already are apps like Poppy and Poke that try to create this kind of mobile, agentic AI. But the paradox of these AI personal assistant tools is that you have to give up a lot of personal data and privacy to make them work correctly, which may just cause you more trouble (remember that time when a Meta researcher ran OpenClaw and accidentally deleted her entire inbox?). Image Credits:Poppy/Second Nature Computing I can’t say that I love giving any tech giant my personal data, but Apple at least seems to care more about security than the other FAANG (MANGO?) companies. On-device AI will always be more secure and less energy intensive than cloud computing, since the data is processed directly on your phone. (This is how current Apple Intelligence features like email summaries and AI emojis are generated.) But for the more complex tasks that Siri will confront, Apple pioneered private cloud compute (PCC), a way for devices to parse complex data over the cloud without even exposing your data to Apple itself. (If it’s possible to hack PCC, it hasn’t happened yet,
Finding a new app on Apple’s App Store is about to become less about browsing top charts or picking through curated collections from App Store editors. This week, Apple announced a series of discovery features that will personalize app recommendations based on users’ interests and behavior, providing a new way for developers to have their app discovered. At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the iPhone maker introduced Personalized Collections in the App Store, which will showcase recommendations tailored to the individual. These will also include new “App Notes” that explain why the specific apps were recommended to you. Starting this week, you’ll find these new personalized suggestions in various places in the App Store, including the Apps or Games tab or on the Search tab. The suggestions will also evolve over time based on a user’s app usage and downloads. The feature will initially be available in English in the U.S., and will expand to other regions and languages over time, Apple says. It complements a range of other new tools designed to help developers better promote their apps to potential customers and encourage users to return to their apps and games. The update reflects the maturity of the App Store ecosystem, where being featured by Apple’s App Store editors or being made “App of the Week” is no longer enough to drive guaranteed growth. As competition for users’ attention increases, a selection of new tools could help to re-engage existing customers, promote special offers, and package services together in new ways. For instance, developers will now be able to use rich images and videos in their product page header and search results that can highlight their new content or seasonal offerings, which could encourage existing users to return to the app to see what’s new. They can also organize all their different marketing materials in a new Asset Library, where they can store regularly used assets for things like in-app events and special sales or promotions. Developers can also showcase special offers and engage players on the Apple Games app. Apple will also allow App Bundles for developers running subscription businesses, allowing them them partner with other developers to offer groups of subscription apps for a lower price than if bought as separate subscriptions. Under the new system, developers will also be able to sell subscriptions to larger groups and organizations using new options to build multi-user in-app purchase experiences. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio
Two years after promising but failing to launch a smarter Siri, Apple unveiled its overhauled AI-powered assistant at its Worldwide Developers Conference, WWDC 2026, on Monday. The idea behind the new “Siri AI,” as it’s called, is to turn Siri from a voice-controlled assistant into an AI companion that can do a lot more. The new assistant will launch alongside a dedicated Siri app. The new Siri can draw on current world knowledge to ground its answers to your questions. The updated assistant will also be able to access information on a user’s device and respond based on what’s displayed on their screen. The tech giant is transforming Siri into a full-fledged conversational AI chatbot to take on popular platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. The update marks a major change for Siri, which has until now been known as a voice assistant. When users ask for information, Siri will display text cards with results, like information from the web or details from text messages. The assistant has also been redesigned for modern iPhones, as it will live in the Dynamic Island. Currently, when you trigger Siri, your side of the phone’s screen glows. With the updated Siri, there’s a new animation in the Dynamic Island instead. Image Credits:Screenshot/TechCrunch The new “Write with Siri” option will let users get help writing text. When you write with Siri in Mail and Messages, the assistant can reflect how you usually communicate with a specific colleague or friend. For example, if you normally send your manager quick and direct bulletin, that’s what you’ll get when you draft an email with Siri. You can swipe down from the dynamic island to search or to start a conversation with Siri by typing, and say “Hey Siri, or use the side button to get an in-depth answer. Users will be able to ask Siri to perform more complex tasks, like writing messages, by giving it specific information and topics to cover. Siri will be able to pull in information from the web and previous emails, along with details from the user’s calendar, contacts, and more. The tech giant also says Siri has a brand-new voice experience, while also being able to speak at a customized pace and expressivity. Additionally, there’s an update to system-wide dictation with a boost in accuracy, as it’s more precise in capturing what you say, from spelling to punctuation and capitalization. With Siri AI, you can ask for an in-depth plan, go back and forth, create a brainstorming session, get feedback on a document, and more. Over on macOS, you can tap into Siri from anywhere, as the company is integrating the assistant into Spotlight, which can now find answers to questions as well. On watchOS, users can ask questions and take action right from their watch. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing aisha@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal. View Bio
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