Tesla Nevada Factory Cycbersecurity attack was serious

Elon Musk said on Thursday that Tesla Nevada factory was a victim of a “grave” ransomware, citing a media story saying that a company employee helped the Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI) foil the threat. 

The Department of Justice issued a lawsuit Thursday detailing a disrupted ransomware attempt on an unidentified corporation in Sparks, Nevada. Tesla has a factory in Sparks that manufactures battery cells, batteries, and electric motors; although Tesla was not mentioned several blogs in the lawsuit, including Electrek and Teslarati, claimed the firm was the target. 

Turning to Twitter, the CEO of Tesla Nevada Musk posted on the post, saying “This was a grave attack.” 

Tesla employee turns down $1 million, works with FBI, and helps thwart a planned cybersecurity attack on Giga Nevada https://t.co/PwIt7x35As

— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2020

Russian national Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to deliberately inflict harm to a secure device by attempting to hire an employee to inject malware into a network, according to the DoJ report. 

Since the ransomware was mounted the suspected attacker had promised the employee a $1 million pay-off. The malware has been developed to install ransomware, a type of malware which encrypts files of a victim in return for a ransom. Prosecutors said the ransomware used an increasingly common modern tactic that not only encrypts files of a victim but also exfilters data to servers of the hacker. 

The worker at Tesla Nevada informed the FBI, who had been active in thwarting the attack, a report from the Las Vegas Field Office of the FBI has revealed.