Panasonic: Data leak over four months

[German]Japanese (electronics) company Panasonic admitted last Friday to unauthorized access to its servers by a third party. A thin-lipped announcement reported only one access on Nov. 11, 2021. But those accesses appear to have occurred over the past four months, if media reports are accurate.

There is not too much in the way of public information. Panasonic only issued a short press release on November 26, 2021 with the following text.

Notice of Unauthorized Access to File Server

Osaka, Japan – Panasonic Corporation has confirmed that its network was illegally accessed by a third party on November 11, 2021. As the result of an internal investigation, it was determined that some data on a file server had been accessed during the intrusion.

After detecting the unauthorized access, the company immediately reported the incident to the relevant authorities and implemented security countermeasures, including steps to prevent external access to the network.

In addition to conducting its own investigation, Panasonic is currently working with a specialist third-party organization to investigate the leak and determine if the breach involved customers' personal information and/or sensitive information related to social infrastructure.

Panasonic would like to express its sincerest apologies for any concern or inconvenience resulting from this incident.

An unauthorized third party got caught on November 11, 2021, accessing the company's IT network without permission and looking at various data on a server. Of course, this was immediately reported to the authorities and an investigation was conducted to determine exactly what information was leaked. Do you know now?

Not really. The Records writes in this article that Japanese media like Mainichi and NHK were able to find out more details about the incident. It says that the attackers managed to gain access to sensitive information such as customer data, personal data of employees and technical files of Panasonic from the company's domestic operations. According to the two news outlets, the hackers had access to the company's servers for more than four months, from June 22 to Nov. 3, 2021, before they were discovered by the company due to unusual network traffic. Let's see what else will be revealed within the next weeks.