Hackers use Tesla's cloud to mine cryptocurrency

Tesla's cloud storage on Amazon Web Services(AWS) was hacked and used to mine cryptocurrency. RedLock, an Indian security research firm detected and reported about the security breach.

RedLock’s researchers say they found Tesla’s unprotected information on a Kubernetes console, a Google-designed system for optimizing cloud applications. The exposure allowed hackers to access Tesla’s cloud environment. The Tesla hackers configured the mining software to keep the CPU usage low and used a non-standard port for not getting detected easily.

The report states that “The hackers had infiltrated Tesla’s Kubernetes console which was not password protected. Within one Kubernetes pod, access credentials were exposed to Tesla’s AWS environment which contained an Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) bucket that had sensitive data such as telemetry.”

Apparently, the crypto hackers employed some “sophisticated evasion measures” as to keep their illicit activity from attracting any attention. The mining software used in this particular case was reportedly fine-tuned as to keep CPU usage within a normal range, thereby improving the odds that no one would notice any unusual activity.

RedLock CTO, Gaurav Kumar told Gizmodo, “The recent rise of cryptocurrencies is making it far more lucrative for cybercriminals to steal organizations computing power rather than their data. In particular, organizations’ public cloud environments are ideal targets due to the lack of effective cloud threat defense programs. In the past few months alone, we have uncovered a number of cryptojacking incidents including the one affecting Tesla.”