Russian Pleads Guilty Over Tesla Ransomware Plot

A Russian who is currently residing in the US admits guilty of plotting ransomware to extort money from Tesla, an electric car company owned by Elon Musk.

Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, a 27-year-old Russian man, had accordingly offered $1 million to an employee to put ransomware in Tesla's battery plant computer network in Nevada. He was supposed to use the said ransomware in order to steal the data and all the secrets of Tesla for extortion.

Prosecutor said Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov is accused of offering an employee US $1M (£721,000) to place ransomware in the computer network of the company's battery plant in Nevada. He accordingly acted on behalf of the criminals abroad and had talked personally to an employee from Tesla to bribe the company.

The Russian pleaded guilty to a Nevada state prosecutor in Reno on Thursday.

Ransomware would attack the internal computer networks of a company or organization and steal all the available information or prevent users from accessing the data. When carried out successfully, the attackers would then demand a huge amount of money for the data to be returned.

The alleged hacker accordingly told the court in September that the government of Russia knew about the said plan of his attack. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and lawyers did not see any connection between the recent attacks and the Kremlin.

Nicholas McQuaid, Acting Assistant Attorney General, said that the quick response from the company and the FBI had stopped the major incident from occurring and prevented the big company from becoming a victim of a data breach through the said extortion scheme. The convicted hacker was said to be in the United States between July and August last year with a five-week tourist Visa when he tried to bribe the said Tesla employee, as recorded in the court documents.

Also, according to the suspect, he and his co-conspirators planned to steal Tesla's internal data, and if the company refuses to pay for the ransom, they will expose the company's secrets on the internet.

Kriuchkov accordingly took out the employee multiple times for a drink and lent him a phone. The employee then told Tesla regarding the hacking plan that the company contacted the FBI and instructed the employee to record his conversation with the Russian hacker.

Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov will face prison for only ten months for signing a deal with the prosecutors to plead guilty.