Factory Reset
The sharp-eyed bloggers at Electrek noticed a fascinating drop today: an FBI complaint detailing how the feds helped foil a plot by Russian hackers to target the electric carmaker’s Nevada Gigafactory with a massive ransomware hack and data breach.
Intriguingly, it sounds as though the hackers weren’t just after ransom — they also wanted to steal corporate secrets about the company’s electric vehicles, in a tacit acknowledgement of the immense potential value of the carmaker’s intellectual property.
Wheel Money
According to the complaint, a 27-year-old Russian hacker named Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov traveled to the United States this summer, where he sought out an anonymous Tesla employee who spoke Russian.
After socializing with the unnamed Tesla employee, Kriuchkov made an eyebrow-raising offer — saying he’d pay the Tesla insider $1 million to introduce malware into the company’s internal computer systems.
Hack at It
The Tesla employee, though, didn’t take the bait. Instead, according to the FBI, he notified his employer, which looped in the FBI. Then the FBI helped set up a sting operation in which the Tesla employee recorded communications and other evidence.
Interestingly — because Tesla founder Elon Musk is a known aficionado of video games — the FBI complaint contains a possible Easter Egg: during communications with the hacker, the unnamed Tesla employee asked Kriuchkov to use the codename “DeadSpace22.”
READ MORE: Tesla and FBI prevented $1 million ransomware hack at Gigafactory Nevada [Electrek]
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