Russian pleads guilty to Tesla ransomware plot

A Russian man in the US has pleaded guilty to plotting to extort money from the electric car company Tesla.

Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov is accused of offering an employee $1m (£721,000) to place ransomware in the computer network of the company's battery plant in Nevada.

He planned to use the ransomware to steal company secrets for extortion, prosecutors alleged.

The 27-year-old pleaded guilty on Thursday in Reno, Nevada.

Mr Kriuchkov acted on behalf of criminals abroad and tried to bribe a Tesla employee in person, prosecutors said.

Ransomware attacks companies or organisations by scrambling their internal computer networks, stealing information or locking users out. The attackers then demand large sums of money in return for ending the hack.