This month, car maker Toyota Australia has been hit by a cyber attack in Australia, with employees locked out of their emails for days.
Toyota Australia’s servers were targeted on Tuesday and an investigation involving federal authorities is under way into who was behind the potentially malicious cyber attack.
The company confirmed it had been the victim of an attempted attack and was working with international cyber security experts to get its operating systems back online.
“At this stage, we believe no private employee or customer data has been accessed,” the company said in a statement. “We have no further details about the origin of the attack.”
All employees are unable to access their emails. Staff, who are continuing to work despite the incident, have been instructed to use “face-to-face communications, phone and text” until emails are recovered.
The attack comes on the same day The Age revealed a cyber crime syndicate hacked and held to ransom the medical files of about 15,000 patients from a specialist cardiology unit at Malvern’s Cabrini Hospital.
Earlier this week, it became known that Australia’s political parties suffered cyber attacks alongside the Parliament House computer network several weeks ago by a “sophisticated state actor”. Cyber security experts believe China is a chief suspect.
Toyota Australia says it is the first time it has been targeted by a cyber attack.
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