Tesla sues former employee for sharing trade secrets

Car maker Tesla sued a former employee for hacking and sharing company trade secrets and confidential information.

The company has accused a former technician at its battery gigafactory in Nevada of sabotage, which the company said was sparked when he was denied a promotion. The company is still trying to figure out if the worker acted alone.

Tesla's lawyers said in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday that the actions were “willful and malicious” and done to deliberately injure Tesla’s business.

“His hacking software was operating on three separate computer systems of other individuals at Tesla so that the data would be exported even after he left the company and so that those individuals would be falsely implicated as guilty parties,” Tesla said.

“There is more, but the actions of a few bad apples will not stop Tesla from reaching its goals,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday.

Martin Tripp told CNNMoney that he was being targeted by Tesla for trying to bring problems at the company to light.

"I am being singled out for being a whistleblower. I didn't hack into system. The data I was collecting was so severe, I had to go to the media," said Tripp

The hack comes a week after CEO Elon Musk announced that the company would lay off 9% of its employees in a bid for profitability.