Nissan has confirmed that it recently suffered a major cyber attack. As of now, the car manufacturer isn’t certain who executed the operation or what information may have been extracted.
Nissan says that although the attack actually occurred on April 13, an official announcement was postponed to give investigators more time to investigate the incident.
Apparently that didn’t work out so well, because Nissan is still unsure as where the hack originated or what data was targeted.
“We have detected an intrusion into our company’s global information systems network,” said Nissan Andy Palmer, who added that the Japanese-based company confirmed the presence of a computer virus on its network and immediately took aggressive actions to protect the company’s systems and data.
“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,” he added.
Cyber attacks against corporations and organizations have become increasingly common over the last few years. Many of the attacks have been traced back to China in the past. Nevertheless, Nissan emphasizes that it still isn’t sure where the attack came from. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the car manufacturer suspects hackers may have attempted to steal intellectual property pertaining to the company’s hybrid and electric vehicle drivetrains.
