Tesla CEO Elon Musk said a “serious” attempt to use corporate knowledge and demand a ransom from his company was thwarted.
See also: Threat Highlights: Search for Elusive Malware
Russian citizen Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, accused of seeking to recruit a insider, bribed him with $1 million to install malware on Tesla’s PC systems to exfiltrate data, which a criminal gang allegedly planned to use to make Tesla pay a $4 million ransom. He arrested Saturday in Los Angeles while seeking to flee to Russia, according to the Justice Department.
Kriuchkov’s alleged recruitment efforts were thwarted after the Russian-speaking Tesla worker reported on the recruitment effort to management, and also agreed to serve as a “confidential human source” for the FBI, referred to as “CHS1” in court documents, and then met with Kriuchkov who knew the workplace was recording his conversations.
An FBI sealed criminal complaint filed Sunday against Kriuchkov accuses him of conspiracy to cause damage to a Victim Company A computer. Although the target company was not named through the FBI, an article published Thursday on the Teslarati news site said the target company was Tesla.
In response to Teslarati’s report, Musk said it was a “serious attack attempt.”
According to court documents, the criminal gang planned to attack Tesla with traditional malware, for which they would pay $250,000, to exfiltrate the data, concealing the theft using a distributed denial-of-service attack as coverage. Their alleged extortion plans called on Tesla to give them $4 million, and they would most likely have demanded more, hoping to achieve that figure after the neopassations, of which $2 million would pass to the boss, $1 million to Tesla’s inside information and rest for criminal gang associates.
On Tuesday, the FBI first announced the opposite case to Kriuchkov, who was arrested in Los Angeles while allegedly seeking to return to Russia.
The FBI says that from about July 15 to August 22, Kriuchkov conspired to recruit a worker founded at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, near Reno, first WhatsApp, then in person. The worker told the FBI that he met Kriuchkov in 2016 and that his tactile data had been shared through a well-known set.
The employee, CHS1, “cooperates with the FBI due to its patriotism toward the United States and a perceived legal responsibility to Victims Society A” and “did not request or be presented with any form of payment, adding immigration or citizenship-related care.” according to court documents, adding an affidavit from the arrest warrant and the criminal complaint, which were drafted through FBI Special Agent Michael J. Array, who works at the FBI’s foreign workplace in Reno and is lately at the rate of counterintelligence investigations.
According to the FBI, “the databases that were required to have law enforcement revealed that Kriuchkov entered the United States on July 28,” arriving in New York on a tourist visa, before flying to San Francisco on July 30 and then renting a car next. day to drive to Sparks. to meet with the employee. “Records also show that Kriuchkov rented a room at a hotel off I-80 in Sparks.”
Kriuchkov allegedly bought a mobile phone once he arrived in New York, which he used to do with the Tesla painter, whom he dressed and dined in Nevada, before inviting him to paint on a “special project” with him and his associates. Unless Kriuchkov knew, however, the painter had alerted senior officials, who had alerted the FBI.
The worker met with Kriuchkov several times, according to court documents, and the FBI described their interactions as “a communication plan designed to hide communications between a manager (Kriuchkov) and a cooperative (CHS1) to promote criminal activity.”
In an August 18 assembly, “Kriuchkov also claimed that the worker is involved in the progression of malware, offering data on corporate victim A’s network to the conspirators,” according to the offender’s complaint.
“CHS1 said Kriuchkov also spoke about a member of the organization (unnamed) who is a hacker and a high-level worker at a government bank in Russia,” according to court documents. “CHS1 stated that this member of the organization specializes in encryption and strives to ensure that malware cannot be traced until CHS1 after CHS1 has installed it on the network.”
According to russian-recorded conversations between the anonymous Tesla worker and Kriuchkov, the FBI said the criminal gang planned to supply malware to the worker, who would install on Tesla’s networks and leave it running for at least six to eight hours. “The co-conspirators would have interaction in a distributed denial-of-service attack to divert attention from malware,” according to court documents, that “malware would allow conspirators to extract knowledge from corporate victim A’s network. Once the knowledge was drawn, the conspirators would extort a really high payment to corporate victim A.”
However, the attempted intrusion was delayed, as Kriuchkov told the worker that “the organization in the last phase of some other allocation that purported to provide a significant payment”, which he had to pay to the worker, according to court documents.
“After being contacted through the FBI,” kriuchkov says he drove from Reno to Los Angeles, where he asked an associate to buy him a price ticket to Russia.
Kriuchkov gave the impression this week before U.S. Judge Alexander F. MacKinnon at the United States District Court in Los Angeles, who ordered his arrest pending trial.
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