Toyota Ransomware Attack Exposes Customers Personal Data

Toyota Financial Services (TFS) notifies customers after a data breach that exposed personal and sensitive financial information.

In a limited number of locations, including Toyota Kreditbank GmbH in Germany, Toyota Financial Services Europe & Africa has discovered unauthorized activity on its systems, as it announced on November 16.

“Due to an attack on the systems, unauthorized persons gained access to personal data. Affected customers have now been informed. Toyota Kreditbank’s systems have been gradually restarted since December 1^st”, the company said.

Toyota Motor Corporation’s finance division is known as Toyota Financial Services (TFS). As a Toyota subsidiary, it offers a variety of financial services to Toyota dealers and customers all around the world. TFS provides a range of financial goods, such as leases, insurance policies, and auto loans. 

TFS aims to assist Toyota customers with financing their automobiles and to make it easier for customers to buy or lease Toyota cars.

Overview of the Ransomware Attack

Data from Toyota Financial Services was allegedly taken by the ‘Medusa ransomware gang’. The group offered the business ten days to provide the $8 million ransom.

The Medusa gang made claims on their leak site today, November 16, including screenshots of multiple documents confirming the hack’s authenticity and listed stolen sample data.

The files contain several spreadsheets, financial documents, staff email addresses, and scans of a Serbian passport. 

One document, in particular, contains un-hashed account passwords and usernames for several types of production and development environments, and much more were all included.

The leak site features a countdown to the full data release date of November 26, which is in ten days. The gang will extend the deadline by one day for US$10,000.

The company took a few systems offline to look into this activity and lower risk. They have also started collaborating with law enforcement. They have begun getting their systems back online in the majority of countries.

German media source Heise received the Toyota data breach notification that was delivered to German customers.

Threat actors were able to obtain the following information such as:

• Full names,
• Residence addresses,
• Contract information,
• Lease-purchase details
• IBAN (International Bank Account Number)

Toyota also reported the security violation to North Rhine-Westphalia’s data protection officer.

Cyber security analyst Kevin Beaumont pointed out that Toyota systems that are reachable online are susceptible to the “Citrix Bleed” vulnerability, which was disclosed late last month and has already impacted numerous major businesses and government agencies.

Recommendation

German customers of Toyota Financial Services are advised to exercise caution and get in touch with their bank to implement extra security measures. They ought to keep an eye out for strange activity and get a current credit report from Schufa.