Honda Hacked – Again
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.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
More by Bertel Schmitt
Comments
Join the conversation
"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...
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?
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.