As of: 02/28/2022 4:33 p.m
Toyota has to stop production in all Japanese plants. The reason is a hacker attack on a supplier of the automaker. More than a dozen factories are affected.
After a hacker attack on a supplier, the world’s largest car manufacturer Toyota shuts down production at all its plants in Japan. The company said 14 factories were affected. In the plants of the subsidiaries Hino and Daihatsu, the tapes are also scheduled to stop on Tuesday.
The hacker attack had previously occurred at the component manufacturer Kojima Press Industries. Toyota normally produces around 13,000 vehicles per day in Japan. The group employs around 70,000 people in the country.
Cyber risk warning
Governments around the world have warned of an increased risk of hacker attacks because of the war in Ukraine. Toyota did not provide any details of the cyber attack on its suppliers and did not suspect Russia as a possible initiator.
Japan has also joined recent US and European Union sanctions against Russia. The tightened punitive measures are aimed at the central bank in Moscow and the Russian foreign exchange reserves. In addition, important Russian banks are to be excluded from the international payment system SWIFT.
No financial interests?
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said it was difficult to say whether Toyota’s production disruption had anything to do with Russia without a thorough investigation. So far, there is nothing to suggest that financial interests could be behind the hacker attack, the Financial Times quoted a cyber security adviser to the Japanese government as saying.
Toyota manufactures around a third of the vehicles it produces domestically. It is still unclear whether the stop will last longer than a day, said a company spokesman.