Japanese technology giant, Panasonic discloses a data breach after hackers gained access to their system. According to the company, the breach lasted for six months – starting from June 22, and ended on November 3, 2021.
In a press release on November 26, the company said that their internal network was “illegally accessed by a third party, and some data on a file server had been accessed during the intrusion.” Dannea DeLisser, Panasonic spokesperson confirmed that the breach began on June 22, and the first unauthorized access was detected on November 11.
Japan's Panasonic has admitted to a data breach – but isn't sure what data intruders accessed. The company has also revised its own breach timeline.
It's probably not time to PAN(ason)IC – wait until 3rd party investigators reveal if PII leakedhttps://t.co/it1mdnY7Kz
— The Register (@TheRegister) November 30, 2021
Osaka, a Japanese company provided more details on the data breach. It said:
“The company is currently working with a specialist third-party organization to investigate the leak and determine if the breach involved customers’ personal information and/or sensitive information related to social infrastructure.”
The company also said that after detecting the unauthorized access in their systems, Panasonic immediately implemented countermeasures to stop external access to data and reported the issue to authorities.
Panasonic Data Breach – Customer Information
Panasonic did not comment on the type of data stolen during the breach, but according to NHK reporter, the attackers infiltrated Panasonic servers storing information regarding its business partners, including details of its technology.
Recently, Panasonic’s subsidiary in India was also hit by a ransomware attack where attackers stole 4 GB of data and leaked it online. It contained sensitive information including financial information and email addresses.
Japanese news outlets have also stated that hackers may have accessed information stored in Panasonic’s storage data. The data included information about customers, personal information about Panasonic employees, and the company’s domestic operation files.
Panasonic has not confirmed nor denied the allegations and has only confirmed the data breach in interviews. The company said on Friday:
“We cannot predict whether it will affect our business or business partners or business performance, but we cannot deny the possibility of a serious incident.”
What’s concerning about this data breach is that Panasonic was only able to detect the breach months later as hackers had already gained access to the internal data storage back in June. Panasonic was able to identify the attack through abnormal network traffic. After detecting the attack, the company reported it to authorities and partner cybersecurity companies for countermeasures.
Panasonic is still investigating the cyberattack and is working with specialists for countermeasures.
Amidst the cyberattacks on Japanese companies, tech giant Olympus was hit by a ransomware attack in September that targeted European, African, and Middle Eastern networks. The company was hit by BlackMatter ransomware that has been used in recent cyberattacks across the world.
Google has also warned Cloud account users against BlackMatter ransomware being used by hackers to access Cloud accounts to mine cryptocurrency.
