Russian national indicted for attempting to recruit Tesla employee to install malware

US authorities have indicted a Russian national for conspiring to recruit a Tesla employee to install malware onto the company’s infrastructure.

Russian national Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov (27) has been indicted in the United States for conspiring to recruit a Tesla employee to install malware onto the company’s network.

In August, US authorities arrested the Russian national Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov (27) after attempting to recruit an employee at a targeted company to plant a piece of malware. The man was arrested on August 22 and appeared in court on August 24. Kriuchkov offered $1 million to the unfaithful employee of the US company.

Kriuchkov conspired with other criminals to recruit the employee of an unnamed company in Nevada. At the end of August, Elon Musk confirmed that Russian hackers attempted to recruit an employee to install malware into the network of electric car maker Tesla.

Teslarati confirmed that the employee contacted by the crooks is a Russian-speaking, non-US citizen working at Tesla-owned lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle subassembly factory Giga Nevada.

“The employee, whose identity has not been revealed, has access to the electric car maker’s computer networks. On July 16, the Russian citizen contacted the Giga Nevada employee through WhatsApp asking to meet with him in Sparks, Nevada.” reads a post published by Teslarati. “As noted in a report from Clearance Jobs, the fact that Kriuchkov approached a Russian-speaking, non-US citizen working at Gigafactory Nevada suggests that the team behind the cyberattack attempt has done their research well. “

The Russian man and his co-conspirators were planning to exfiltrate data from the network of the company and blackmail the organization to leak stolen data, unless the company paid a ransom demand.

A few days after meeting the employee, Kriuchkov exposed his plan to the employee offering him between $500,000 and $1,000,000 for the dirty job. The malware would provide Kriuchkov and co-conspirators, the malicious code was specifically designed to steal information from Tesla.

The employee decided to warn Tesla and the company reported the attempt to the FBI. The employee had more meetings with Kriuchkov that were surveilled by the FBI. On August 22, the FBI arrested Kriuchkov.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Norway)