Kawasaki Got Hacked, Personal Data May Be Getting Ransomed

Everyone's everything is on the internet. 

Your date of birth, your social security number, you bank account and routing numbers, even your totally secure passwords that no one will ever guess not in a million years are online. It's just the price of living in today's society. But as more and more things require those personal data points, your personal information is more at risk from hackers, as not every company's data security is up to NSA-levels of encryption. 

There have actually been a string of recent high-profile hacks, including one where nearly every American's health information was breached. But the latest is from Kawasaki Europe, which saw its servers go down and, according to the group saying it was responsible, got a ton of personal data which it's now ransoming back. 

According to the brand, Kawasaki's servers were hacked earlier in September and were brought down for a period of time. "At the start of September, Kawasaki Motors Europe, (KME) was the subject of a cyber-attack which, although not successful, resulted in the company’s servers being temporarily isolated until a strategic recovery plan was initiated later on the same day," read a statement from KME.

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It added, "The KME IT department, IT staff at its Branches plus external cyber security advisors spent the following week isolating and health-checking all servers and restoring their interconnectivity. By the start of the following week, over 90% of server functionality was restored and, despite the need to ensure that each and every server was free of non-authorised information, normal business had been resumed in respect of dealers, business administration and third-party suppliers such as logistics companies."

However, though KME stated that the hack was not successful, the group RansomHub boldly claimed that it had, in fact, been successful and acquired personal data from Kawasaki's servers. 

The blog BleepingComputer, stated, "[RansomHub] added the company to its extortion portal on the dark web on September 5, 2024, claiming the theft of 487 GB of data from Kawasaki's networks. It is unclear if RansomHub holds customer data in the stolen files, but this scenario cannot be ruled out at this point."

For those unfamiliar with RansomHub, the hacker collective aren't the white or black hats that most folks are familiar with, as the group's singular goal is one of financial gain. It enacts that goal by obtaining secured data and threatening to expose it on the web if those companies it hacked don't pay up, ergo the ransom part in RansomHub.  

As for what will happen, it's unclear, as Kawasaki says everyone's data is safe, but the hackers say the opposite and have given the company a timetable to produce cash to buy that supposedly hacked data back. So stay tuned.