Hackers hijacked Tesla cloud to mine cryptocurrency

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA — Researchers at a cloud-monitoring firm discovered that Tesla's account was hacked and used to mine cryptocurrency.

Fortune reports that unidentified hackers accessed an unprotected Kubernetes console owned by Tesla, and obtained login credentials to the company's Amazon Web Services cloud.

They gained entry to the account using the login credentials, in the process exposing sensitive data stored inside about Tesla's test cars.

The hackers than installed crypto mining software, which ran scripts that allowed them to mine cryptocurrency. In order to avoid detection, the intruders deliberately reduced CPU usage and masked their IP addresses.

RedLock, the firm that discovered the breach, notified Tesla of the breach on January 30.

Tesla has since resolved the issue, and reportedly found no indication that customer privacy or vehicle safety and security were compromised.