500,000 BMW, Mercedes and Hyundai owners hit by massive data breach

500,000 BMW, Mercedes and Hyundai owners hit by massive information breach

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The personal information of near 400,000 United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland-based BMW customers is being sold to the highest bidder on an online black market, co-ordinate to Tel Aviv-based darknet intelligence experts KELA.

Hackers at a group called KelvinSecurity Team have gained access to a BMW client database and listed it for sale on an underground forum used past cybercriminals.

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Co-ordinate to a report from SC Magazine, the database beingness flogged to cybercrooks includes a whole host of sensitive data, such as the initials and surnames of car owners, their home addresses and email addresses, and the names of dealerships and car-registration information.

As per the study, the hackers claim that they got concur of the database via a call centre that works with a range of auto manufacturers.

The database is believed to consist of 500,000 client records dated from 2016 to 2018. These not but include the details of Brits who own BMW cars, only also owners of Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai and SEAT vehicles.

Speaking to SC Magazine, Kela researchers explained how the hacking group predominantly sells compromised information on underground forums. Last month, the hackers sold sixteen databases that contained the information of contractors working for the U.Southward. government and weapons beingness created by the Russian military machine.

Active on the dark web

But the group hasn't just been looking to make money from stolen information. The hackers besides made 28 databases freely available on the internet, with targets from countries like the U.S, Commonwealth of australia, France, Sweden, Indonesia, Iran and Mexico (according to SC Magazine).

A week ago, BleepingComputer reported that the grouping was selling compromised information from market enquiry firm Frost & Sullivan. This information was left available for anyone to access online as a result of being stored in an insecure backup folder.

Jake Moore, a security specialist at ESET, warned that hackers could apply such information to launch "rather convincing phishing campaigns masquerading every bit BMW or a partner organisation".

"I would recommend whatever vehicle possessor to be extremely cautious when opening emails suggesting they are from the likes of BMW and Mercedes from now on," Moore told Tom's Guide. "Phishing emails that request any further information tin be used in conjunction with stolen information from the breach and could be used in a future set on or identity theft.

"Information technology is now vital that all affected customers are actress vigilant whenever they receive unsolicited emails that announced to be from their manufacturer that request farther data, personal, fiscal or otherwise as these could include links to well-crafted cloned websites."

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Nicholas Fearn is a freelance technology journalist and copywriter from the Welsh valleys. His work has appeared in publications such as the FT, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, The Next Spider web, T3, Android Central, Computer Weekly, and many others. He besides happens to exist a diehard Mariah Carey fan!