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Toshiba appeared to be the latest company to suffer a hacking attack. Since this one wasn’t tweeted by Anonymous, LulzSec or other hackers under the banner of AntiSec campaign, there should be different intruders with a different aim. One of the reasons suggested is that the company possibly angered groups in Asia.
Security experts confirmed that Toshiba looks like it fell foul of multiple attacks over the last weekend. The first attack was carried out by hacking group V0iD, which breached into a server for Toshiba America. Hackers claimed that they had managed to obtain usernames and passwords of almost 500 of the Toshiba's customers along with nearly 20 resellers and a dozen of admins on Toshiba’s Electronic Components and Semiconductors and Consumer Products wings.
A few days after the first intrusion, Toshiba issued an official announcement to admit that its American-based servers with customer registration data had been hacked. The database in question included data on 7,520 of the company’s customers. However, the company assured the database didn’t contain such personal information as financial data, including credit card and social security numbers. Nevertheless, the harm was done – the intruders managed to get away with e-mail addresses and passwords of 681 people.
The company explained that the stolen data related to people who used to buy products from its registered retailers, which seems to be a doubtful target for AntiSec campaign. Security experts remind that over the past several months there was a range of high-profile hacker attacks on multinational corporations like Sony. However, all those attacks were only carried out for notoriety and to show that the hackers can do that, which is not Toshiba’s case.
The first reason for targeting Toshiba is to show that the hackers can do that. Apparently, Toshiba didn’t pay much attention to warnings that large companies are being targeted. The second reason is that the intruders might know something about Toshiba the others don’t – it may appear that the company has something to hide in Asia that hasn’t come out here yet. Finally, security experts point out that Toshiba could have been targeted for financial gains. Despite the fact that the company has said no financial information leaked, the e-mail addresses and passwords are enough to be used to assist the intruders log into other websites and send out malicious mails.
