Due to a system breakdown at Kojima Industries Corp, which supplies plastic parts, Toyota shut down 28 manufacturing lines at its 14 sites in Japan on Tuesday. However, the Corporation has confirmed that all of its Japanese operations will reopen on Wednesday, a day after a Japanese supplier was forced to close due to a hack that caused a computer system to malfunction.
The shutdown halted the manufacture of around 13,000 vehicles, or 5% of the company’s monthly output.
There was no information about the perpetrators or the act’s purpose. It happened shortly after Japan joined Western partners in putting pressure on Russia in reaction to the invasion of Ukraine. However, it was unclear whether the two incidents were connected.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the government was examining the origins of the attack during a regular news conference on Tuesday and encouraged corporations to beef up their cybersecurity in light of the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine.
“The risk of cyberattacks is increasing,” he said, adding that “there is the possibility that the damage from the attacks can have a broad impact not just on the supply chains of enterprises themselves, but also their customers.”
Cybersecurity has emerged as a major source of concern in Japan, where critics claim that the government’s response to hacking threats has been hampered by a fragmented approach: an attack on a previously unknown supplier was enough to bring one of the world’s most powerful manufacturers to a halt in its domestic operations.
On Saturday night, Kojima Industries, which supplies the automaker with plastic parts and electronic components, noticed a mistake on one of its file servers. It confirmed the server had been compromised with malware and discovered a threatening message after rebooting it.
According to reports, this is the first time Toyota has shut down all of its domestic operations due to a supplier system breakdown. Toyota has already stopped plants in Japan and elsewhere owing to a scarcity of parts caused by the current crown pandemic.
According to a statement by the automobile giant on Monday evening:
“We would like to apologize to our customers and associated suppliers for the inconvenience caused.”
