Toyota confirms data breach after access key leak

Photo courtesy of itbusiness.ca

Article courtesy of IT Business.ca

TORONTO. - Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation has confirmed a breach that revealed the information or customers.

The breach was made possible by an access key called Toyota T-Connect, which has been publicly available on GitHub for nearly five years. This enabled unauthorized third party to access the data of 206,019 customers between December 2017 and September 15, 2022, when access to the GitHub repository was restricted.

Toyota T-Connect is the company’s official connectivity app. It allows Toyota car owners to connect their smartphone to the vehicle’s infotainment system for phone calls, music, navigation, notification integration, driving data, engine status, fuel consumption, and more.

The company eventually changed the keys to the database on September 17, 2022, ultimately blocking any potential access by unauthorized third parties.

Although the company accepted responsibility for the lapse, it blamed a development subcontractor for the error. Toyota assured that customer names, credit card details and phone numbers were not compromised as they were not stored in the exposed database.

However, Toyota warns that while there is no evidence of data misuse, there is still the possibility that someone may have accessed and stolen the data. Therefore, it is important that all T-Connect users who registered between July 2017 and September 2022 remain vigilant against phishing scams. They are advised not to open email attachments from unknown senders pretending to be from Toyota.

The sources for this piece include an article in Bleeping Computer.