Nissan Owners Advised to Monitor Their Phones Following Major Cyberattack | Carscoops

      A software breach has resulted in a customer data leak affecting 21,000 Nissan drivers, raising fresh concerns about privacy and scams.

      Red Hat experienced a significant breach that compromised data belonging to Nissan customers. The auto manufacturer had enlisted Red Hat to manage its sales company's IT systems.

      Approximately 21,000 Nissan customers had their personal information, including emails and addresses, compromised.

      Following a cyberattack on the U.S. software provider Red Hat in late September, about 21,000 Nissan customers had their data breached. Fortunately, no sensitive credit card details were taken during this incident.

      The breach was the result of a targeted attack on Red Hat in September, which led to the theft of hundreds of gigabytes of data from around 28,000 private GitLab repositories. Red Hat had previously been contracted by Nissan to create a customer management system for one of its regional sales branches, Nissan Fukuoka Sales Co.

      Nissan released a statement this week indicating that Red Hat informed them of the data breach on October 3. The stolen key data includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and other customer-related details used in sales efforts.

      Concerns over phone and mail scams have arisen.

      Despite these troubling developments, Nissan reported that there is currently no evidence to suggest that the data has been maliciously used. Nevertheless, the automaker is advising affected customers to be vigilant regarding unexpected communications, including questionable phone calls or unsolicited mail claiming to be from Nissan.

      "Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. received a report from Red Hat, the company it hired to develop customer management systems for its sales companies, about unauthorized access to its data servers, which resulted in a data leak," according to the company's statement.

      "It was later confirmed that the leaked data included certain information about customers from Nissan Fukuoka Sales Co., Ltd."

      At this time, Nissan has not specified whether it will reach out individually to those affected by the breach. However, the company indicated that the compromised data seems to be confined to customers in Japan, implying that owners in the U.S. and other regions were likely unaffected.

      "Nissan takes this incident very seriously and will enhance its surveillance of subcontractors while implementing additional measures to bolster information security," the company stated. "We sincerely apologize to our customers for any inconvenience this may have caused."