Toyota reports a data breach - the e-mail addresses of several hundred thousand customers could have fallen into the hands of hackers. They had been accessible to hackers for several years.
Hackers have probably captured the data of almost 300,000 customers of the Japanese car giant Toyota. This was announced by the group in the city of Toyota. "We have determined that 296,019 customer email addresses and associated administrative numbers may have been compromised," a press release said. Accordingly, drivers who use the Toyota online service T-Connect are affected.
A spokeswoman for Toyota Germany said in the afternoon that it had now turned out that customers in Europe were not affected. The company in Japan said there was no possibility that other data such as names, phone numbers, credit cards or other information was leaked. Nevertheless, experts rate such incidents as serious, because the basic information captured can be used to launch more dangerous phishing attacks on those affected.
The latest incident is in a series of data leaks and cybersecurity incidents at the Japanese company and its suppliers. In March 2019, the data of 3.1 million customers fell into the hands of hackers. This February, Toyota had to temporarily shut down production facilities after a supplier was hit by a cyber attack. In the current case, the weak point was apparently also with a supplier.
He put part of the T-Connect program code on the Github platform and accidentally made the code available to the public in December 2017. "The published source code contained an access key to the data server, which gave access to e-mail addresses and customer management numbers." Access by third parties was not confirmed in the data server, Toyota said. But he was "not completely ruled out". Telephone numbers or credit card information are not affected.
