ByteDance officially filed a lawsuit with the Beijing Haidian District People's Court over former intern Tian Moumou's malicious attack on the company's internal model training, claiming 8.02 million yuan and demanding a public apology. This incident originated from June to July 2024. Tian Moumou was dissatisfied with the resource allocation and maliciously attacked the company's projects by tampering with the code, causing resource loss. Although ByteDance has terminated the internship agreement in August 2024 and notified relevant agencies, Tian Moumou continued to deny the behavior, so the company decided to take legal measures to protect its rights and interests. This move also demonstrates the company's commitment to safeguarding internal security and intellectual property rights. determination.
According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, the Beijing Haidian District People's Court has officially accepted ByteDance's lawsuit against former intern Tian. The company accused Tian of tampering with code to attack the company's internal model training, and requested the court to order Tian to compensate Infringement losses of 8 million yuan and reasonable expenses of 20,000 yuan were required, and the company was also required to make a public apology.
It is understood that in October 2024, some media reported that ByteDance’s large model training task was attacked by interns, and online information mentioned that “more than 8,000 cards were involved and tens of millions of dollars were lost.” ByteDance later issued a clarification announcement through its official account, confirming that an intern had seriously violated discipline and had been dismissed in August 2024. The announcement also pointed out that what was affected was the model training task of a research project of the company's commercialization technology team, which did not affect the company's formal projects and online business, and the rumors that "involving more than 8,000 cards and tens of millions of dollars in losses" were seriously exaggerated. .
ByteDance further disclosed the details of the incident in the "Corporate Discipline and Professional Ethics Committee Notice" released on November 5. The report shows that from June to July 2024, former intern employee Tian Moumou was dissatisfied with the team's resource allocation and maliciously attacked the model training tasks of the team's research project by writing and tampering with codes, resulting in resource loss. The company has terminated the internship agreement with him and notified the situation to the Sunshine Integrity Alliance, the Enterprise Anti-Fraud Alliance and his school.
ByteDance chose to initiate the lawsuit at this time because Tian was a Ph.D. student, and the company first handed it over to the school after he was dismissed. However, during the handling of the incident, Tian Moumou repeatedly denied the behavior involved, saying that it was not himself who attacked the model training task, but other interns. Since Tian Moumou did not realize the mistake and his behavior had violated the company's security red line, ByteDance decided to file a lawsuit in court to show the company's serious attitude towards such incidents and prevent similar incidents from happening again.
The outcome of this case will have important reference significance for internal security management and intellectual property protection of enterprises. It also reminds enterprises to strengthen employee management and risk prevention measures to avoid similar incidents from happening again. The final outcome of this lawsuit will be interesting to watch.