Nissan Motor Company confirmed that their networks had been successfully breached by an unknown intruder who had placed data harvesting malware on corporate information systems.
The infiltration was first detected more than a week ago, but the company chose not to disclose knowledge of the breach until it had time to conduct an investigation. The duration of the breach is as of yet unknown.
Nissan believes that no sensitive customer, employee or proprietary data was compromised, but acknowledged that some account login credentials may have been exfiltrated.
Nissan released the following statement:
"We have detected an intrusion into our company's global information systems network."
"On April 13, 2012, our information security team confirmed the presence of a computer virus on our network and immediately took aggressive actions to protect the company's systems and data. This included actions to protect information related to customers, employees and other partners worldwide. This incident initially involved the malicious placement of malware within our IS network, which then allowed transfer from a data store, housing employee user account credentials."
"As a result of our swift and deliberate actions we believe that our systems are secure and that no customer, employee or program data has been compromised. However, we believe that user IDs and hashed passwords were transmitted. We have no indication that any personal information and emails have been compromised. Regardless, we are continuing to take appropriate precautionary measures."
"Due to the ever-evolving sophistication and tenacity of hackers targeting corporations and governments on a daily basis, we continue to vigilantly maintain our protection and detection systems and related countermeasures to keep ahead of emerging threats. Our focus remains on safeguarding the integrity of employee, consumer and corporate information."
While Nissan remains confident the breach was minimal, as with other such corporate network intrusions, the true extent of the damage could take weeks to accurately determine.