Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
RedLock, a firm that deals with cybersecurity, recently announced that Tesla’s Amazon cloud account had been compromised. They were investigating leaked credentials on the web and discovered that they belonged to Elon Musk’s electric car company. What’s interesting about this breach is that, even though the hackers had access to numerous confidential data within the company, they left it all intact. They were actually only after the processing power to help them mine cryptocurrency. RedLock immediately contacted Tesla and the breach was rectified within hours. According to the Tesla company, no sensitive data was stolen and their customers aren’t at risk.
The fact that the hackers weren’t all that interested in the private data and vehicle telemetry Tesla had on the cloud tells us a lot about the cryptocurrency craze that’s still going large. RedLock, however, stated that this is perfectly normal as the value of powerful mining processors is much greater than any confidential data the company has on the cloud. The hackers found an administrative console that wasn’t password protected and used it to gain access to their system. According to the RedLock, it’s impossible to find out the identity of the hackers or how much cryptocurrency they mined. They simply got away with it at Tesla’s expense.
Tesla wasn’t the only company hacked in the past year. There have been numerous reported cases of cloud-hacking, mainly because it’s a rather new technology and easy to exploit. When combined with the lucrative crypto-trading and the fact that the consequences are minimal for the perpetrator — it seems that these attacks will continue to happen for some time. The only way to fight this type of cyber crime is through regular check-ups and bug bounty programs that helped Tesla discover the breach. The RedLock company was reportedly paid $3,000 for their lucky find.
Do you think that Tesla should be a bit more careful with their security?
