It turned out that a major tire maker, Bridgestone's American group company, was hit by a cyber attack and several local factories had been shut down for about a week from the end of last month.
Since last month, there have been a series of attacks targeting the supply chain of the automobile industry.
According to the company, unauthorized access to the internal system was confirmed on the 27th of last month at the group company "Bridgestone Americas" in the United States.
In order to prevent the damage from spreading, measures were taken to shut down the system that controls production and sales from the network, and as a result, several factories in North America and Latin America were shut down.
The outage has lasted for over a week and is now restarting.
The company believes that the ransomware, a ransomware-type computer virus that encrypts data from companies and makes it invisible, was used in cyber attacks, and is investigating it in detail in collaboration with specialized agencies.
At the same time, Toyota Motor Corp. suspended the operation of all domestic factories due to the impact of cyber attacks on the parts makers of its business partners, and recently, unauthorized access was revealed at the German base of a major parts maker, Denso. Attacks aimed at the supply chain of the automobile industry are occurring one after another.
Hacker group "LockBit 2.0" "Aiming at this company"
A group of hackers calling themselves "LockBit 2.0" claims to have aimed at the company on a dark site online.
"LockBit 2.0" uses ransomware to perform cyber attacks that encrypt data such as companies so that they cannot be seen, and if the requested ransom is not paid, the crime is threatened to release the stolen data. It is said that it has released the data of Bridgestone group companies that are believed to have already been stolen.
According to the security company, the data was uploaded in two parts as of 16th of this month, and more than 3600 files such as documents that are considered to be related to budget and audit have been published.
According to this group, the damage of cyber attacks seems to be one after another in Japan, and in August last year, a construction consulting company that undertakes construction management of public works projects was attacked by local governments nationwide and there is a possibility that data was stolen. In addition, in October, a municipal hospital in Tokushima Prefecture was attacked and the electronic medical records could not be viewed, causing great damage.
When NHK contacted this group with the cooperation of a security company last year, they said that if they found a security vulnerability, they would attack any company.