Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla was recently attacked in order to extort $ 1 million in Bitcoins from the automaker.
Ransomware attack on Tesla
A Russian citizen contacted a Tesla employee from a manufacturing facility in Nevada, and persuaded him to install a ransomware program in the Tesla computer network. The fraudster offered the employee $ 1 million and a prepayment of 1 PTS, in exchange for downloading the software.
Instead of accepting the bribe, the employee called the FBI. During the investigation, the us Federal Bureau of investigation arrested 27-year-old Russian Yegor Igorevich Kryuchkov, who was the culprit of the extortion attempt. Kryuchkov was detained in Los Angeles on August 22, and currently faces up to 5 years in prison for the extortion scheme if found guilty.
Speaking about the cryptocurrency extortion attempt targeting his company, the CEO said it was a major attack after he suffered a previous bitcoin hack on Twitter that hit his social media platform as well as other tech moguls and well-known figures.
The attempted ransomware attack came at a time when the market is seeing a sharp rise in Tesla shares, with a market capitalization of about $ 465 billion, after an announced 5-to-1 stock split that quadrupled Musk’s fortune.”
Overtaking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the SpaceX founder is now among the top three richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index.
