Elon Musk on Thursday confirmed speculations that Tesla Inc's factory in Nevada was the target of a potential cyberattack.
The news website Teslarati earlier this week reported that Tesla was the unnamed company mentioned in a report by the US Department of Justice that said the FBI had managed to thwart a cybersecurity attack.
Turning to Twitter, Musk commented on the article, saying that "This was a serious attack".
Much appreciated. This was a serious attack.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2020
According to the DoJ report, Russian national Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer by trying to recruit an employee to introduce malware into a system.
The alleged perpetrator had promised the employee a $1 million pay-off after the malware was installed.
The employee, however, turned to the FBI, who managed to thwart the attack.