Toyota Motor Corp will resume local production from Wednesday, after a cyberattack on a supplier paralyzed its factories for one day, sparking concern about the vulnerability of Japan’s supply chains.
There is no information available about who is behind the attack, nor the motive. The episode came just after Japan joined its Western allies in clamping down on Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, although it was not known if the event was related.
The cybersecurity has emerged as a key area of concern in Japan, where government critics say responses to hacking threats have been hampered by a fractured approach, with an attack on one vendor enough to take one of the biggest manufacturers powerful in the world to curb their production at the local level.
The production lines of Toyota will restart at its 14 factories across the country on Wednesday, the company said in a statement. Tuesday’s suspension affected production of some 13,000 vehicles.
Kojima Industries Corp., which supplies plastic parts and electronic components to the automaker, said it had discovered a bug on one of its file servers on Saturday night. After restarting the server, he confirmed that he had been infected with a virus, and found a threatening message, he added.
The message was written in English, a Kojima spokesman told Reuters, but declined to elaborate.
A system glitch made it difficult to communicate with Toyota about parts orders and led to a production halt at the automaker, Kojima said.
Government ministers said they were closely monitoring the incident.
While large companies have cybersecurity measures in place, authorities are concerned about small and medium-sized subcontractors, Industry Minister Koichi Hagiuda said on Tuesday.
