Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Elon Musk confirms Russian hacking plot targeted Tesla factory

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Cyber Security

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-confirms-russian-hacking-plot-targeted-tesla-factory/

Earlier this week, US authorities arrested and charged a Russian national for traveling to the US to recruit and convince an employee of a Nevada company to install malware on their employer's network in exchange for $1 million.

While no court indictment named the targeted company, several news outlets specialized in covering the electric cars scene speculated today that the attack had very likely targeted US carmaker Tesla, which operates a mega-factory in Sparks, a town near Reno, Nevada.

While Tesla had not returned requests for comment on the topic, in a tweet earlier today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk officially confirmed that the hacking plot did, indeed, target his company.

"Much appreciated. This was a serious attack," Musk wrote, answering to one of the multiple news reports speculating that Tesla was the supposed target.

Employee went to the FBI early in the recruitment process

The entire attack was a rare case where hackers decide to use so-called "malicious insiders," a term the cyber-security industry uses to describe rogue employees.

According to court documents, a 27-year-old Russian man named Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov reached out to one of Tesla's employees via WhatsApp, after the two had previously met four years ago, in 2016.

Kriuchkov said he was vacationing in the US and arranged for the two to meet, with the Russian hacker traveling to Reno for this purpose.

Throughout multiple meetings, Kriuchkov revealed to the Tesla employee that he was working with a Russian-based hacker group and proposed the employee to install a piece of custom-built malware on Tesla's internal network.

Kriuchkov said the malware, which the group spent $250,000 to build, would exfiltrate data from Tesla's network, and upload it to a remote server. The plan was to steal sensitive Tesla files and then threaten to release the data unless Tesla paid a huge ransom demand.

The employee, who the FBI described as a Russian-speaking immigrant, notified Tesla and the FBI about the proposal after his first meeting with Kriuchkov.

Subsequent meetings were recorded and documented in the indictment, including the employee negotiating his cut from $500,000 to $1 million, and how the Russian-based hacker gang delayed the Tesla hack for later this fall as they breached another company and they needed to focus on the current target.

FBI agents arrested Kriuchkov as he tried to leave the US via Los Angeles over the weekend, and charged him on Monday. If found guilty, Kriuchkov could face up to five years in prison for his role in the scheme.

Photo: ZDNet

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