Details emerge after an honest Tesla employee thwarted a ransomware plot

Elon Musk confirmed last week that a Tesla employee reported a credible ransomware plot. The employee had been offered $1 million dollars to install the ransomware at their Giga Nevada facility, according to the FBI.

Via Wired, which has excellent coverage of the details:

Earlier this month, according to a recently unsealed criminal complaint, a 27-year-old Russian man named Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov met an old associate who now worked at Tesla at a bar in Reno. They drank till last call. At some point in the evening, the FBI says, Kriuchkov took the person's phone, put it on top of his own, and placed both devices at arm's length-the universal sign that he was about to say something for their ears only. He then invited the Tesla employee to collaborate with a "group" that carries out "special projects." More specifically, he offered the staffer $500,000 to install malware on his employer's network that would be used to ransom its data for millions of dollars.

Just a few weeks after that Reno meeting, FBI agents arrested Kriuchkov in Los Angeles as, the Department of Justice says, he was trying to flee the country. His recruitment scheme failed, the complaint says, when the employee instead reported Kriuchkov's offer to the company, which in turn alerted the FBI, leading the bureau to surveil Kriuchkov and arrest him not long after.

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