Elon Musk has revealed that a Tesla employee was offered $1 million to assist a Russian hacker group in a cybersecurity attack. The staffer, who was working at a factory in Sparks, Nevada, turned down the bribe and helped the FBI arrest a member of the group last week after it emerged that they were reportedly planning on installing malware to access Tesla's files and data and use the sensitive information to ask for a large ransom.
Musk confirmed the news on Friday when he responded to a report of the incident that had been shared to Twitter.
"This was a serious attack," he wrote in reply to the tweet.
The FBI have been building a case against the suspect, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, since the Tesla employee first began talking with the Russian hacker via WhatsApp after initially meeting in 2016. The two met up on several occasions, during which time Kriuchkov divulged his plan and asked that the employee install custom-built malware, worth around $250,000, on Tesla's internal network, according to court documents cited by The Sun.
The hack was put on hold until later this year so that the Russian group could focus on a cybersecurity attack on another company, the documents further reveal.
The employee notified the FBI of the bribe shortly after conversations with Kriuchkov began, and has been assisting throughout the investigation. The suspect was arrested over the weekend after he was caught traveling to the U.S. posing as a tourist and is now facing up to five years in prison.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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