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WannyCry ransomware takes Honda car manufacturing plant offline
WannaCry, the ransomware that made global headlines in May, is back. Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co. Ltd. was forced to shut down a manufacturing plant briefly after the systems running the plant were infected.
Honda’s Sayama plant on the outskirts of Tokyo, which manufactures the Accord, Odyssey and Step Wagon models and produces around 1,000 vehicles each day was shut down Monday, according to Reuters, after the company discovered a WannaCry infection that affected its networks across Japan, North America, Europe, China and other regions. Why the specific plant was shut down is not clear. Other Honda plants operated as normal.
The Japanese company is not the only car maker to have experienced issues with WannaCry infections. Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. were also reportedly infected by the ransomware last month.
WannaCry, which used code developed by the National Security Agency that exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system, ran rampant in the middle of May, initially infecting government computers in Europe before going global. While the absolute number of computers infected by the ransomware is not 100 percent certain, it’s believed to have spread to at least 250,000 personal computers across most of the globe and at one point was expected to infect more than 1 million computers.
Like other forms of ransomware, WannaCry encrypts key files on a computer and demands that users pay a ransom in bitcoin, with the main variant asking for the equivalent of about $300. Along with soliciting a response from the U.S. government, countries including India and The Philippines established dedicated task forces to deal with WannaCry’s spread.
“This latest incident reminds us that our efforts to defend our organizations against emerging threats is continuous,” One Identity Director Andrew Clarke told Infosecurity Magazine. “Regular review of all systems and their communication protocols is necessary and, more importantly, a thorough analysis of access controls.”
Photo: Morio/Wikimedia Commons
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