A recently revealed criminal complaint points out how a Russian hacker tried to recruit a Russian-speaking Tesla worker for $1 million.The 27-year-old hacker named Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov met his former partner, who recently works at Tesla, at a bar in Reno.. The two had several drinks before Kriuchkov proposed to the Tesla worker to enroll in his “group” specializing in “special projects.”The hacker handed the Tesla worker $1 million to install malware and cause a ransomware attack opposite the company.Elon Musk declared the plot and the FBI arrested the Russian while trying to flee the country.
The FBI says the first meeting between the two took a position in 2016.However, the alleged hacker contacted the employee via WhatsApp in July 2020.Kriuchkov allegedly took his possible recruit to Emerald Pools in Nevada and Lake Tahoe.However, he refused to appear in any of the photographs taken on the tours.
Soon after, Kriuchkov made donations for the staff member to enroll in his special assignment group.He gave the worker $500,000 to install malware from a USB stick or by clicking on a malicious email link.The hacker promised to encrypt the malware so that the worker who installed it on the computer system may not discover it.
Kriuchkov also promised to run a distributed denial-of-service attack to sow confusion at Tesla during the installation process.The staff member was told that he or she could take the opportunity to mentor a colleague in his or her selection to teach him or her a lesson.He used the same tactics in some other company and that the dishonest worker had not been discovered after 3 years.
To convince the member, Kryuchkov raised the value to $ 1 million, which the member would get in money or bitcoin.
If the employee agreed, the cybercriminal organization would exfiltre the knowledge of the electric car manufacturer.The cybercriminal said he would rescue knowledge and threaten to publish it online if his demands were ignored.Kriuchkov also revealed that they had demanded a $6 million ransom from the company.who had paid $4.5 million.
A few weeks before his arrest in Los Angeles, Kriuchkov told him to postpone ransomware’s attack on Tesla and noted that a similar attack failed after an infiltrator failed to install the malware.
Unless he knew, the Tesla member had alerted his company to the malicious plot to execute a ransomware attack opposed to the organization.Tesla contacted the FBI, which promptly began tracking Down Kriuchkov.The federal government arrested Kriuchkov in Los Angeles on August 22 while trying to flee the country, according to the Department of Justice.
Authorities targeted Tesla Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada.The company’s Gigafactory Nevada site is located just outside Reno, where the two met.
Tesla founder Elon Musk declared the ransomware attack plan and thanked the worker in a tweet Thursday.
Ransomware operators would possibly have been desperate after not being able to enter PC systems from the outside and now rely on internal ones to install malware on their behalf.The fact that they can pay a million dollars to install malware shows that the ransomware attack industry is booming.
“As the risk landscape continues to become increasingly unpleasant throughout the day, ransomware attacks like the one that opposes Tesla go back and forth.The appeal of Tesla’s attempt is that the attackers tried to cooperate with Tesla workers with the promise of a big payout However, in many cases, this story has the prospect of ending differently with compromised systems and exposed knowledge,” says Warren Poschman, senior solution architect at Comforte AG.”Businesses want to ensure that the security measures that Data-Centric Security brings maximum benefits by enabling knowledge to be protected and secure, even if it is shared, stolen, or misused, and external and internal knowledge is well protected.risks.”
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