According to a report by Cariad, Volkswagen's software subsidiary, there was a massive data breach affecting 800,000 electric vehicle owners. German edition Mirror online world. The leak left personal information online for months, including movement data and contact information.
This included precise location data for 460,000 vehicles made by VW, Seat and Audi. The information was reportedly made available through Amazon's cloud storage platform. There is a silver lining here. Cariad says that despite their availability, no attacker has gained access to the exposed data. The conscientious hacker association Chaos Computer Club (CCC) discovered the leak on November 26 and brought it to the attention of the company.
This is stated in a statement from VW. review by the German press agency DPA that the error has since been corrected and the information is no longer available. In addition, the company noted that the leak only concerned location and contact information, and passwords and payment information were not affected. The department added that initially only some vehicles registered with online services were at risk, saying that “the data was accessed through a very complex, multi-step process.”
According to Volkswagen, the CCC hacker group was only able to access pseudonymised vehicle data, which did not allow any conclusions to be drawn about specific customers. This was done “only by bypassing several security mechanisms, which required a high level of knowledge and a significant investment of time.”
In other words, affected customers shouldn't worry too much about their location data being collected by ne'er-do-wells on the dark web. The company has launched an investigation into the matter and will decide on further steps once it is completed.
Like modern cars get more and more onlinethis opens them up to many new risks. Just last year, a viral TikTok challenge taught Hyundai users how to hack their transportresulting in more than a dozen accidents and eight deaths.