Honda Motor Company (NYSE: HMC) experienced a total halt of its global operations after falling prey to a cyberattack targeting its central servers in Tokyo. The attack, which took place on Monday, forced the company to send many employees at factories across the world home.
The cyberattack against the Japanese auto manufacturer was a breach of the company's servers by a form of "ransomware"; the company believes that the particular virus that infected its servers may be the "Snake" virus. Ransomware is a type of computer virus that dates as far back as the late 1980s; ransomware works by encrypting the files on an infected computer (or in this case, Honda's servers) and demanding payment in exchange for the decryption key to recover the data. Honda has been the victim of ransomware in the past, being just one of dozens of companies that fell victim to the "WannaCry" virus in 2017. The WannaCry attack also forced the company to cease production temporarily.
Honda confirmed the attack in statements made to the press, as well as on social media, such as Twitter. The company stated that the virus was making it difficult to utilize internal systems, such as email, and had wreaked havoc on its customer service website, taking down many of the company's services such as online car payments. The company has stated, however, that no personal information has been compromised.
"Honda has experienced a cyberattack that has affected production operations at some U.S. plants. However, there is no current evidence of loss of personally identifiable information. We have resumed production in most plants and are currently working toward the return to production of our auto and engine plants in Ohio," Honda said in a statement to Engadget.
Luckily for Honda, the damage appeared to be limited enough to allow production at US factories to continue Tuesday. Honda's factories in Brazil, India, and Turkey, however, reportedly remained closed. At the time of writing, many customers are reporting that Honda's customer service website is still not functioning correctly on social media.