German hackers have discovered a massive leak of Volkswagen driver data
Data on the movements of about 800,000 Volkswagen electric cars has been made publicly available. The information was stored unprotected in Amazon cloud storage for several months and allowed to create detailed profiles of the movements of drivers of Volkswagen, Seat, Audi and Skoda cars. This was reported by Der Spiegel magazine on December 27.
The German hacker group Chaos Computer Club (CCC) drew attention to the data leak. Its representatives contacted German government agencies and the company Cariad, which deals with software for Volkswagen, and warned of the problem. The carmaker said that the security hole is currently closed.
It is noted that the precise location data of 460,000 cars that were connected to online services could have allowed accurate conclusions to be drawn about drivers' movements. According to the CCC, not only ordinary citizens, but also politicians, entrepreneurs, as well as representatives of various police departments in Europe were at risk.
Volkswagen said that the data collected will be pseudonymized and used to improve batteries and software. The manufacturer will not use them to track people's movements or create profiles of their driving activity in any way. In a statement to Spiegel, Cariad assured customers that no sensitive data such as passwords or payment information was disclosed.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred involving a major automaker jeopardizing the privacy of its customers. In 2023, Toyota acknowledged a major incident involving the data leak of about 2.15 million car owners in Japan.
On December 23, AGR announced a recall of almost 56 thousand cars of Volkswagen and Skoda brands in Russia. The service campaign started on December 15. The reason for the recall was given as possible destruction of the fuel line material under "extremely rare circumstances".
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