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Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation is a worldwide automobile manufacturer with its headquarters in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture.
Kiichiro Toyoda formed the company, which was officially established on August 28, 1937. Toyota is one of the world’s major automotive manufacturers, with a production capacity of around 10 million automobiles each year.
What Happened?
Toyota Motor Corp. announced that it would resume operations in all of its Japanese factories after a one-day halt following a computer system breakdown at a domestic supplier as a result of a cyberattack.
Toyota ceased operations as a consequence of a system fault at Kojima Industries Corp. in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture.
Kojima Industries, a supplier of plastic components for Toyota, declared that its computer server system had been infected by a virus, and a threatening message was discovered, therefore increasing the risk that the system was compromised by ransomware.
The corporation said that it had notified the government of its findings and that it had also alerted the authorities.
The temporary suspension impacted all 28 of Toyota’s domestic manufacturing lines, which were spread over 14 facilities, resulting in reducing its output to around 13,000 automobiles.
As Threatpost reports, this is the first time that Toyota has shut down all of its domestic operations due to a system failure at a supplier.
The outage came after the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry issued a warning to Japanese businesses last week, urging them to improve their defenses against cyberattacks in the wake of geopolitical concerns surrounding the Ukraine crisis.
Premier Fumio Kishida told reporters on Monday that the government was looking into the Toyota situation and that the investigation was ongoing. When asked whether Russia was behind the hack, Kishida said,
It is difficult to say whether this has anything to do with Russia before making thorough checks.
A Possible Reason for the Attack
Following in the footsteps of other Western nations, Japan has banned certain Russian banks from using the SWIFT payments messaging system and has promised to restrict transactions with Russia’s central bank, potentially denying the Russian government access to tens of billions of dollars in foreign reserves.
The 14 facilities that have been shut down include a facility in Tokyo operated by Hino Motors Ltd., a subsidiary of the Toyota group’s truck producer, and a plant in Kyoto Prefecture operated by minivan manufacturer Daihatsu Motor Co.
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Dora is a digital marketing specialist within Heimdal™ Security. She is a content creator at heart - always curious about technology and passionate about finding out everything there is to know about cybersecurity.
