Work at a Honda car plant in Japan was stopped immediately after WannaCry ransomware was located within the company’s network.
Honda had made efforts to secure its systems amid the epicentre of the global WannaCry attacks last month, but the company discovered on Sunday that it had affected its networks in Europe, North America, Jamap and China.
This pause in car manufacturing will prove costly as the Sayama plant near Tokyo builds around 1000 vehicles per day. Operations have since resumed as normal, and no other plants were caused to stop work.
WannaCry affected 150 countries worldwide, having a crippling impact on organisations such as the NHS, and Telefonica in Spain. Both organisations were forced offline, with Telefonica urging staff to shut systems down in an effort to stop the spread of the cyber attack.
The attack stands as a stark reminder that human error will be exploited by hackers, hammering home the critical importance of timely patching in particular. It is also a reminder that simple attacks such as phishing can build a foundation for a cyber catastrophy.
READ MORE: WannaCry is warning for everyone
Marco Cova, senior security researcher at Lastline said: “One of the lessons of this incident is that security is a concern for all type of businesses, including “traditional” ones, and all areas of business, including those that are typically not seen as being “online”: nowadays, every business is an online business and can be affected by a security incident, either as part of targeted attacks or as part of random malicious activity.”
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“This incident also shows that security incidents more and more frequently have an impact in the physical world: just like WannaCry affected the ability of the NHS to offer services to its patient, now we have an example of manufacturing capability being impacted by an attack.” Cova said.
