Some hackers must have some serious beef with Japanese companies. It’s getting painful. Sony, still reeling from a massive security breach, now received an invitation to a congressional grilling. Sony is not alone. Honda Canada found personal information from 283,000 Honda and Acura customers stolen. Jerry Chenkin, executive vice-president and chief compliance officer at Honda Canada Inc., confirmed to The Toronto Star “that names, addresses and vehicle identification numbers were taken from the company’s e-commerce websites myHonda and myAcura, with suspicious activity on the site first detected in late February. “
Honda had been alerted by “unusual volume on the sites,” including “some unauthorized attempts to access account information,” a letter to customers says. The letter said customers should be on the alert for marketing overtures that reference ownership of a Honda or Acura vehicle.
It is not the first time that Honda had become a target. Last year, 4.9 million data sets were stolen from Honda USA. Hackers made away with 2.2 million names, email addresses and car information of current owners who registered their data on the Honda or Acura websites. The VINs of these cars were also taken. The blackhats also absconded with 2.7 million names and email addresses of people who had expressed their interest in receiving Acura information.
Supposedly, Honda responded to the U.S. breaches with an audit of its online security practices and its web vendors. The results of that audit must not have filtered up north.
“Some hackers must have some serious beef with Japanese companies.” -> I doubt this is hacktivism aimed specifically at the Japanese. It sounds like the intent of this attack was to get customer information, perhaps for identity theft.
My guess is the folk that broke into Honda wander around rattling everyone’s doorknob until they can find a place where they can get in…
Actually, there is a correlation. A lot of Chinese “angry youth” hate anything Japanese and possess some hacking skills.
But yeah, Honda’s computer security must be weaker than Toyota’s.
You know that “hate anything Japanese” for a fact?
Nissan sold more than a million cars to that angry youth last year. Toyota sold some 700,000 units in China last year, Honda sold more than 600,000, all to the people who supposedly hate anything Japanese. They pack the flights to Japan to go shopping in Tokyo. It’s strange to be in a Tokyo department store and hear Chinese announcements. Chinese wear clothes from Uniqlo, shop at Japanese owned 7-11, and do their hacking on Sony laptops.
Stop living in the past. And stop outsourcing racism.
I hate any attempts to generalise a population’s traits but, in fairness to WSN, he did identify a fairly distinct sub-set. Bertel, your response is actually more of a blanket generalisation than his.
I’m sure there are SOME Chinese that hate everything Japanese just as there are obviously many who are not so blinkered.
Bertel, most angry youths can’t afford a car. Like SimonAlberta said, it’s just a subset that exists.
There are 1.4 billion people in China, and yeah millions bought Japanese cars (including my in-laws, lot of friends). But it only takes one skillful angry-youth to crack a website, assuming he is smart.
You may have lived in Beijing for several years, and I am sure you know more about auto commerce better than I do. But nonetheless, you didn’t grow up there (like I did), you just don’t get the full picture.
Bertel,
That is the only thing we are good at outsourcing in the US anymore, racism. We are running out of jobs to outsource, so we are just looking at new markets :)
Unless Honda’s been trying to attack internet anonymity or they removed the abilty to run a different OS, the attacks are unrelated.
What can someone really do with someone’s VIN and driver info anyway? Register them for something like another insurance policy?
This is several $$millions worth of leads that can be sold to marketing firms, auto & insurance lead resellers, etc.
What is wrong with (your) politicians? (and that includes all pollies around the globe). Aren’t they supposed to be managing their state, country, political subdivison for the good of the people instead off getting miffed that a commercial company was broken into? Should the commercial company grill them to asked what became of law and order and plain good manners under their watch?
They would be better off looking at the ramifications with Lockheed Martin behing hacked instead of Honda.