Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
You'd think the days when the Nigerian prince scams tricked people into revealing their bank account details are gone, but the most recent studies reveal shocking statistics.
Nefarious actors running such social engineering schemes still make more than $700,000 a year from Americans who believe they'd get rich overnight.
Toyota's employees are seemingly more tech-savvy, as a recent computer issue that knocked offline 28 assembly plants across Japan has nothing to do with scams, cyberattacks, or any other type of malicious attempts. That's what the carmaker claims, trying to explain why 14 of its domestic plants suddenly shut down earlier this week.
A company spokesperson did not reveal the cause of the time, explaining that the carmaker was conducting an internal investigation. He only pointed to a generic computer problem, refusing to share details regarding the models whose production was affected.
The computer system suffering the outage was in charge of incoming auto parts.
Security incidents have become worryingly common for the Japanese carmaker.
Earlier this year, the company revealed a database misconfiguration that exposed the data of millions of drivers. The carmaker initially said that only Japanese customers were exposed, but its investigation revealed that drivers in other countries, including Australia, got their records out in the open due to the security blunder.
Fortunately for everybody involved, the misconfiguration, which was Toyota leaving an online server unprotected with a password, exposed details related to the Connected service, including names, contact details, and personal information. The carmaker found no evidence that a third party accessed the data.
The really concerning part is that the data was exposed beginning in November 2013, with the patch shipping only earlier this year. In other words, Toyota did not discover the flaw for ten years, leaving drivers' data in the wild. It was a human error, Toyota said.
Carmakers have become common targets of cyberattacks, most often ransomware. A ransomware infection encrypts the hard drive contents, restricting access to the local files unless the owner pays a ransom to obtain the decryption key. Ransomware typically reaches the local computer network through malicious files distributed via email or with links pointing users to dangerous payloads.
The only way to regain access to an infected computer is to restore the computer to an earlier backup.
Japan's largest port and Toyota's local shipping hub went offline in May due to a ransomware attack, suffering major disruption in its shipping operations. According to local sources, the ransomware infected the port's computers, with the hackers contacting the port's authorities using a message distributed on a printer. The local officials restored the systems, but critical operations were unavailable for several days. Toyota used the port for importing parts and exporting vehicles to most international markets.
Toyota's employees are seemingly more tech-savvy, as a recent computer issue that knocked offline 28 assembly plants across Japan has nothing to do with scams, cyberattacks, or any other type of malicious attempts. That's what the carmaker claims, trying to explain why 14 of its domestic plants suddenly shut down earlier this week.
A company spokesperson did not reveal the cause of the time, explaining that the carmaker was conducting an internal investigation. He only pointed to a generic computer problem, refusing to share details regarding the models whose production was affected.
The computer system suffering the outage was in charge of incoming auto parts.
Security incidents have become worryingly common for the Japanese carmaker.
Earlier this year, the company revealed a database misconfiguration that exposed the data of millions of drivers. The carmaker initially said that only Japanese customers were exposed, but its investigation revealed that drivers in other countries, including Australia, got their records out in the open due to the security blunder.
Fortunately for everybody involved, the misconfiguration, which was Toyota leaving an online server unprotected with a password, exposed details related to the Connected service, including names, contact details, and personal information. The carmaker found no evidence that a third party accessed the data.
The really concerning part is that the data was exposed beginning in November 2013, with the patch shipping only earlier this year. In other words, Toyota did not discover the flaw for ten years, leaving drivers' data in the wild. It was a human error, Toyota said.
Carmakers have become common targets of cyberattacks, most often ransomware. A ransomware infection encrypts the hard drive contents, restricting access to the local files unless the owner pays a ransom to obtain the decryption key. Ransomware typically reaches the local computer network through malicious files distributed via email or with links pointing users to dangerous payloads.
The only way to regain access to an infected computer is to restore the computer to an earlier backup.
Japan's largest port and Toyota's local shipping hub went offline in May due to a ransomware attack, suffering major disruption in its shipping operations. According to local sources, the ransomware infected the port's computers, with the hackers contacting the port's authorities using a message distributed on a printer. The local officials restored the systems, but critical operations were unavailable for several days. Toyota used the port for importing parts and exporting vehicles to most international markets.
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