Volkswagen earthquake: Data of 800 thousand vehicle owners leaked

Volkswagen earthquake: Data of 800 thousand vehicle owners leaked

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Volkswagen earthquake: Data of 800 thousand vehicle owners leaked



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Volkswagen (VW), Audi, Seat ve Skoda belonging to brands 800,000 electric vehicles Several terabytes of the owner’s sensitive information were exposed for months due to a misconfigured and unprotected Amazon cloud storage system. This massive data leak revealed not only the GPS coordinates of vehicle owners, but also details such as battery status and whether the vehicle was running or not.

The data leak affects not only VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda electric vehicle owners living in Germany, but also other parts of Europe and the world. The fact that sensitive GPS coordinates are among the exposed data increases the size of the crisis.

Information of politicians, police officers and even intelligence officers was leaked

According to reports, it is possible to associate vehicles with the personal identification information of their owners, thanks to additional data accessible through the VW Group’s online services. Specifically, in 466,000 of the 800,000 cases, location data was so sensitive that anyone with access could profile each owner’s daily habits in detail.




Volkswagen earthquake: Data of 800 thousand vehicle owners leaked



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Location reports per square kilometer of vehicles affected by the data leak.

According to Spiegel’s report, among those affected by the leak are not only ordinary citizens; German politicians, entrepreneurs, Hamburg police (including the entire electric vehicle fleet) and even iintelligence service employees There is also.

What caused this error?




Volkswagen earthquake: Data of 800 thousand vehicle owners leaked



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The source of this scandal was an error at VW Group’s software development company Cariad. This error, which occurred in the summer of 2024, led to sensitive information being stored unprotected. Although most of the data is from 2024, it was stated that some of it goes back further. The person who revealed the incident is Europe’s largest hacker community. Chaos Computer Club (CCC) became. CCC obtained the information with the help of an anonymous tipster and warned VW Group, giving it 30 days to remedy the situation.

According to CCC’s statement, the Cariad team acted quickly and responsibly to prevent unauthorized access. In its statement to its customers, Cariad Sensitive data such as passwords or payment information are not exposed He assured them that “there is no need to take any action as sensitive information such as passwords or payment data are not affected.”

Still, experts warn that such data could have serious consequences if it falls into the hands of malicious people. Criminals or spies can create detailed profiles from this data and, for example, determine where an intelligence officer goes every day. These data can also be used for phishing email attacks.

German politicians, who were among those affected by the leak, reacted to the situation and stated that the automotive industry should raise its cyber security standards. Speaking to Spiegel, one politician said, “This situation is shocking,” while another described the incident as “disturbing and shameful.”