Tesla employee foregoes $1M payment, works with FBI to thwart attack
teslarati.com
teslarati.com
>that could allow the hackers to occupy the Tesla information security team. ... extract corporate and network data, which would be held ransom.... For his participation in the ploy, the Gigafactory Nevada employee would receive $500,000, later raised to $1 million, to be paid in cash or bitcoin.
...
>The hacker agreed to pay an advance of $11,000 to the Giga Nevada worker. Two days later, on August 21, the Tesla employee was contacted by the hacker once more, who stated that the project was being “delayed” and all payments relating to the plan would not be transferred until a later date.
It is always easy to increase an offer that you don't plan to make good on.
Reminds me of the Pascal's wager variant: "Lend me a $1000, I will give you $1M in a month. Don't trust me? Make it $100M. However small you think the probability that I will make good, just take the reciprocal and multiply that in, and that's what I promise."
It is a demonstration that Pascal's wager is nonsense.
Russia is a petro-state: it depends utterly on oil revenue to function. I don't know how long it thinks it can delay the arrival of electric cars with schemes like this, but evidently it doesn't mind trying, and it also thinks that the current U.S. national leadership is too inept or too in its pocket to mount a real response.
It doesn't make sense to me, unless Russia really doesn't give a shit about its government employees nor its public image
How many other companies have been breached in such a manner? We assume FANNG are immune but are they really?
... the hacker reportedly boasted that his team had recently received a ransom worth over $4 million from [...] CWT Travel
Well I guess I have my answer: not that cool.