Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Email Security

Toyota Discloses Data Breach Impacting Source Code, Customer Email Addresses

Japanese car manufacturer Toyota has disclosed a security incident that involved source code hosted on GitHub and which may have resulted in unauthorized access to roughly 300,000 customer email addresses.

Japanese car manufacturer Toyota has disclosed a security incident that involved source code hosted on GitHub and which may have resulted in unauthorized access to roughly 300,000 customer email addresses.

The incident, the company says, impacts customers who have subscribed to the T-Connect website, a service and mobile application that provides users with car management features such as find my car, maintenance reminders, concierge services, and vehicle information.

In a data breach notice, the carmaker explains that the root cause of the data breach was a subcontractor uploading Toyota source code to a GitHub repository that was inadvertently set to public access.

Because of this misconfiguration, the source code remained exposed to the internet between December 2017 and September 2022, when public access to the repository was revoked.

The source code, the company says, contained an access key to a server where customer information such as email addresses and management numbers (assigned automatically to each user) were stored.

Toyota says that, immediately after identifying the data breach, it made the GitHub repository private and changed the access key to the impacted server.

However, the company has not been able to determine whether any third party has used the access key to connect to the server, but says it has started sending out apology letters to over 296,000 customers, to warn them of the potential exposure of their email address.

No other customer information – such as names, addresses, phone numbers, or credit card details – was impacted in the incident, as no such data is stored on the potentially exposed server. Email addresses for Lexus vehicles or MyToyota apps were not impacted either.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

The carmaker also notes that, while it has no evidence of misuse of the exposed email addresses, impacted customers should be wary of phishing emails and other types of scams.

Toyota has set up a special page on its website that allows users to check whether their email address was exposed in the incident.

In February 2022, the carmaker was forced to suspend production at all its 14 plants in Japan over a suspected cyberattack.

Related: Vulnerabilities Expose Lexus, Toyota Cars to Hacker Attacks

Related: IBM Security: Cost of Data Breach Hitting All-Time Highs

Related: Optus Says ID Numbers of 2.1 Million Compromised in Data Breach

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Understand how to go beyond effectively communicating new security strategies and recommendations.

Register

Join us for an in depth exploration of the critical nature of software and vendor supply chain security issues with a focus on understanding how attacks against identity infrastructure come with major cascading effects.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cloud Security

Cloud security researcher warns that stolen Microsoft signing key was more powerful and not limited to Outlook.com and Exchange Online.

Compliance

Government agencies in the United States have made progress in the implementation of the DMARC standard in response to a Department of Homeland Security...

Email Security

Many Fortune 500, FTSE 100 and ASX 100 companies have failed to properly implement the DMARC standard, exposing their customers and partners to phishing...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Application Security

Fortinet on Monday issued an emergency patch to cover a severe vulnerability in its FortiOS SSL-VPN product, warning that hackers have already exploited the...

Cybercrime

Enterprise users have been warned that cybercriminals may be trying to phish their credentials by luring them with fake emails that appear to be...

Cloud Security

Microsoft and Proofpoint are warning organizations that use cloud services about a recent consent phishing attack that abused Microsoft’s ‘verified publisher’ status.

Cloud Security

Proofpoint removes a formidable competitor from the crowded email security market and adds technology to address risk from misdirected emails.