A growing number of these hacks point to the use of “malicious insiders,” a term for rogue employees who aid the attacks from inside the company.

In the last three years, Russian hacker cybercriminal groups have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to private businesses and governmental entities. In the recent multinational Garmin attack, the Russian-based “Evil Corp” was implicated. 

Tesla Employee reaches out to the FBI 

According to the court documents, Egor Kriuchkov reached out to one of Tesla’s employees via WhatsApp. He had met the employee in 2016. Kriuchkov claimed he would be vacationing in the U.S. and would like to get together in Reno.

The FBI describes the Tesla employee as a “Russian-speaking immigrant,” who notified Tesla and the FBI about the hacking conspiracy immediately after the initial meeting with Kriuchkov.

In multiple meetings, which were recorded and documented, Kriuchkov revealed that he was working with a Russian-based hacker group and proposed the employee install a piece of custom-built malware onto the Tesla internal network.