Nevada, United States — Elon Musk has confirmed that the Tesla factory in Nevada was the target of an attempted cyber attack.
Musk confirmed the attack on Twitter saying “this was a serious attack,” in response to a report made by Teslarati. The report said that an employee at the Gigafactory in Reno has helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation to derail the planned attack by a Russian man who was arrested on Aug. 22 and charged with conspiracy to intentionally damage a protected computer.
The Justice Department said in a statement on Tuesday that Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, had tried to recruit an employee at a unidentified company to introduce malware in the company’s computer system. The malware was intended to extract data from the network and to seek ransom from the company.
Kruichkov had promised the employee that he would get $1 million after the malware was introduced into the computer network. The employee approached by Kriuchkov was a Russian-speaking person who had access to the company’s computer networks. Luckily the employee warned Tesla about the approach and the automaker informed the FBI.
