Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Nissan Gets Hacked, Intellectual Property Possible Target

Via DailyTech.com (April 24, 2012) -

Nissan Motor Company has announced that its information systems have been hacked. So far, the company doesn't know who the hackers were, or where they struck from and it's unclear what data may have been compromised. Nissan believes that the hackers were looking for intellectual property related to its EV drivetrains.

Nissan maintains that it quickly secured its system and issued a statement alerting customers and employees that its data systems were breached. Nissan says that the infiltration was noticed on April 13 so it has been roughly 10 days since the database was compromised.

The statement read:
We have detected an intrusion into our company's global information systems network.

On April 13, 2012, our information security team confirmed the presence of a computer virus on our network and immediately took aggressive actions to protect the company's systems and data. This included actions to protect information related to customers, employees and other partners worldwide. This incident initially involved the malicious placement of malware within our IS network, which then allowed transfer from a data store, housing employee user account credentials.

As a result of our swift and deliberate actions we believe that our systems are secure and that no customer, employee or program data has been compromised. However, we believe that user IDs and hashed passwords were transmitted. We have no indication that any personal information and emails have been compromised. Regardless, we are continuing to take appropriate precautionary measures.

Due to the ever-evolving sophistication and tenacity of hackers targeting corporations and governments on a daily basis, we continue to vigilantly maintain our protection and detection systems and related countermeasures to keep ahead of emerging threats. Our focus remains on safeguarding the integrity of employee, consumer and corporate information.
Nissan says that it opted to keep the hack secret for the last 10 days until it had a better idea what was going on according to a spokesman cited by The Detroit Bureau.

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Looks like Active Directory might have got popped.

Primary Sources....

Nissan Statement: Nissan is Taking Actions to Protect and Inform Employees and Customers Following an Intrusion into the Company's Global Network Systems

The Detroit Bureau: Nissan Scrambles After Major Cyber-Attack

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