Nissan Oceania reports a major cyber attack targeting internal systems

Japanese automobile manufacturer Nissan announced on Thursday that its Australia and New Zealand arm suffered a significant cyber security incident that affected the company’ daily operations.

In a security incident notice pasted on the homepage of its regional websites, the Australian and New Zealand Nissan Corporation and Financial Services said that it has launched an internal investigation, with assistance from its global incident response team and relevant stakeholders, following the discovery of the cyber attack.

The company has also notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre about the data security incident and is working with them to resolve the matter.

“Nissan is working to restore its systems as soon as possible and will continue to provide updates by its website available via nissan.com.au and nissan.co.nz,” the notice reads.

Nissan Oceania, the regional division of the famous Japanese automaker that covers distribution, marketing, sales, and services in Australia and New Zealand, could not share details on who is behind the cyber attack or how the threat actors infiltrated its network. The company has assured its customers and clients that it will share more details as the investigation progresses.

The company said that its priority is to identify whether any sensitive personal data of its customers and clients have been compromised during the incident.

“While the extent of the incident is still under investigation, Nissan encourages its customers to be vigilant across their accounts, including looking out for any unusual or scam activities,” the company added.

Nissan said that while the cyber security incident affected some of the dealer systems, local Nissan dealerships are still operating. Customers can contact their local dealerships for any vehicle and servicing related queries.

In January 2021, Nissan North America suffered a significant leak of source codes for various internal tools and applications after it misconfigured a Git repository, letting hackers access its contents and share them on Telegram and hacker forums. The misconfigured Git server owned by Nissan North America was spotted by software engineer Tillie Kottmann who said that the Git server was secured via a default username and password combination of admin/admin.

The misconfigured Git server contained source codes for various Nissan NA mobile apps, the vehicle logistics portal, vehicle connected services, Nissan internal core mobile library, various marketing tools, client acquisition and retention tools, some parts of the Nissan ASIST diagnostics tool, and Nissan/Infiniti NCAR/ICAR services.