Volvo Cars said it was investigating a cybersecurity breach and theft of a limited amount of the company’s research and development data.
A statement posted on the company website said: “Volvo Cars has become aware that one of its file repositories has been illegally accessed by a third party. Investigations so far confirm that a limited amount of the company’s R&D property has been stolen during the intrusion. Volvo Cars has concluded, based on information available, that there may be an impact on the company’s operation.
“After detecting the unauthorised access, the company immediately implemented security countermeasures including steps to prevent further access to its property and notified relevant authorities.
“Volvo Cars is conducting its own investigation and working with third-party specialist to investigate the property theft. The company does not see, with currently available information, that this has an impact on the safety or security of its customers’ cars or their personal data.”
It appears that the theft was targeted at the company’s R&D data and not customer information.
The media outlet Inside-it, which was the first to report the breach, found a screenshot on the dark web that showed Volvo’s data was released on the website of a ransomware gang called Snatch.
The ransomware added an entry on their data leak site on November 30 about breaching Volvo Car Corporation’s servers and stealing files during the intrusion, together with screenshots of the stolen files as proof.
Since then, Snatch has also leaked 35.9 MB of what they claim to be documents stolen from Volvo’s servers during the intrusion.
