Electric car manufacturing giants Tesla along with FBI has prevented a major ransomware attack in its Gigafactory at Nevada. The development was noted from a complaint from the FBI.
FBI released a statement which said that about tthe arrest of Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, a 27-year-old Russian citizen, who they claim was part of a group who attempted to extort millions of dollars from a company in Nevada, which has now been identified as Tesla.
According to the complaint, Kriuchkov traveled to the US in July on a tourist visa and made contact with a Russian-speaking employee at Tesla Gigafactory Nevada.
He met the employee, who remains anonymous in the complaint, several times socially before making him a proposition to pay him to help introduce malware in Tesla’s internal computer system in order to extract corporate data and affect Tesla’s operations, electrek reports.
Kriuchkov alleged that he was representing a group that would then arrange a ransom with Tesla in order to not release the information and stop affecting its operations.
The employee didn’t refuse, but he immediately informed Tesla, who in turn informed the FBI.
The FBI launched a sting operation with the employee who wore a wire and shared text communications with Kriuchkov as they were negotiating the terms of the malware attack.
