A recent report from a German news magazine has revealed a massive Volkswagen leak that left the data of 800,000 electric vehicles exposed for several months. According to Der Spiegel, the months-long data leak exposed the phone numbers, email, and even physical addresses of some drivers. The leak raises questions about the safety of consumer data that companies have been collecting in increasing amounts over the past few years.
Der Spiegel was first notified of the data leak by a whistleblower and the Chaos Computer Club, Europe’s largest association of hackers. The German news magazine says the data leak occurred due to vulnerabilities in the software installed in Volkswagen’s vehicles. This software reportedly granted bad actors the ability to trace the exact movements of Volkswagen drivers.
The leak occurred on a global scale and involved electric vehicle brands under Volkswagen, such as Audi, Skoda, and Seat. Bad actors could use the software to locate and pull driver data stored in Amazon’s cloud storage before linking it to driver names and contact details. In some cases, they could also access data on when drivers switched their electric cars on and off as well as their physical addresses, mobile phone numbers, and email addresses.
Der Spiegel notes that the leak also provided ‘precise’ locations of around 460,000 vehicles, with data on Seat and Volkswagen vehicles being accurate to a whopping 10 centimeters and within 6 miles for Skoda and Audi cars.
Cariad, the Volkswagen subsidiary that developed the vulnerable software, says it has already dealt with the issue and told the German news magazine that sensitive data such as payment details or passwords wasn’t affected and that there was no need for action from Volkswagen customers. Volkswagen and Cariad didn’t respond to requests for a statement.
The Mozilla Foundation once referred to modern cars as a ‘privacy nightmare’ after a study discovered significant privacy concerns resulting from all the consumer data they collect. Vehicles were officially the worst products in terms of privacy, the foundation noted, with 84% of automakers reviewed in the study sharing the consumer data they collect with outside parties and 92% providing drivers with little to no control over their data.
As the global automotive industry phases out internal combustion engine (ICE) cars for electric vehicles, we can expect automakers to collect even more data from consumers. Without robust and ongoing defenses to keep this data safe, data breaches of even larger magnitudes could rock the auto industry in the future.
This situation at VW is likely to be taken as a cautionary tale by major EV industry players like Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) given how grave a leak of this nature could be upon their reputations.
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