Security News > 2021 > May > Russian to be Deported After Failed Tesla Ransomware Plot
A Russian man was sentenced Monday to what amounted to time already served and will be deported after pleading guilty to trying to pay a Tesla employee $500,000 to install computer malware at the company's Nevada electric battery plant in a bid to steal company secrets for ransom.
Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, appearing by videoconference from jail, apologized after U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno acknowledged the attempted hack was not successful and the company network was not compromised.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged after Kruichkov's arrest in August in Los Angeles that the company had been the target of what Musk termed a serious effort to collect company secrets.
The hack was designed as a distributed denial-of-service attack, using junk data to flood the Tesla computer system, while a second intrusion would let co-conspirators extract data from the company network and demand ransom with the threat of making the information public.
Other suspected co-conspirators are identified in court document by nicknames, and references are made to at least one other failed effort to target another unidentified company.
Kriuchkov told a judge in September that he knew the Russian government was aware of his case, but prosecutors and the FBI never alleged ties to the Kremlin.