Over 20 lakh Toyota owners face risk of vehicle data breach in this country

More than 20 lakh Toyota vehicle owners in Japan are facing the risk of data leaks. The Japanese auto manufacturer on Friday said that a total of 2.15 million users in Japan alone had been affected by the vehicle data breach. The carmaker claims that the leak had impacted consumers who signed up for its main cloud service platforms since 2012, as the data have become publicly available for a decade due to a human error.

Reuters reports that the issue commenced in November 2013 and lasted until mid-April this year, and it stemmed from a human error, leading to a cloud system being set to public instead of a private one. Toyota vehicles are not the only ones affected by the issue, but its luxury car division, Lexus too, has been impacted. The incident comes as the world's biggest automaker by sales pushes into vehicle connectivity and cloud-based data management, which are crucial for autonomous driving and other artificial intelligence-backed features.

The report claims that the data that have been leaked include details such as vehicle locations and identification numbers of vehicle devices. However, Toyota has claimed that there are no reports of malicious use of that data so far. "There was a lack of active detection mechanisms, and activities to detect the presence or absence of things that became public," the news agency has cited a Toyota spokesperson saying.

The car manufacturer also said that it would introduce a system to audit cloud settings, establish a system to monitor settings continuously, and thoroughly educate its employees on data handling rules. Toyota also said that steps to block outside access to the data were taken after the issue was discovered, and an investigation into all cloud environments managed by Toyota Connected Corp was being carried out.