Japanese car-maker giant Honda hit by a ransomware attack

Japanese carmaker Honda announced it has been hit by a cyberattack that disrupted its business in several countries.

The Japanese carmaker Honda announced that threat actors have compromised the Honda network disrupting its business in several countries. Source informed about the security incident believe Honda’s systems have been infected with SNAKE Ransomware.

BleepingComputer reported that a security researcher named Milkream has found a sample of the SNAKE (EKANS) ransomware submitted to VirusTotal that checks for the internal Honda network name of “mds.honda.com”.

“When BleepingComputer tried to analyze the sample, the ransomware would start and immediately exit without encrypting any files. The researcher states that this is because the ransomware tries to resolve the “mds.honda.com” domain, and failing to do so, will terminate the ransomware without encrypting any files.” states BleepingComputer.

“Security researcher Vitali Kremez has also told BleepingComputer that in addition to the mds.honda.com check, it also contains a reference to the U.S. IP address 170.108.71.15. This IP address resolves to the ‘unspec170108.amerhonda.com’ hostname.”

The reference to an IP address and the internal hostname check suggests the attack was launched against Honda. caused by a SNAKE ransomware attack.

The company confirmed that no breach of data has occurred as a result of the attack, it said that there is no impact on Honda customers.

The organizations is working to “minimize the impact and to restore full functionality of production, sales and development activities.″

“At this point, we see minimal business impact,″ reads the statement published by the company.

The cyber attack distrupted production in Japan on Monday morning, but now the operations have been resumed,

Production in Japan is back to normal, after being disrupted Monday morning.

The impact of the attack on production in the UK could be limited because production at the factory in Swindon has been suspended during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“The attack also comes as automakers face pressure to invest large amounts of money in new technologies such as electric and autonomous cars to meet air pollution limits in Europe and China and fend off competition from tech companies.” states AP News.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Honda, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.