Toyota has accused an IT contractor that the car manufacturer fired just last week of breaking into its computer systems, and stealing sensitive information including trade secrets.
In a complaint filed at the US District Court in Lexington, Kentucky, the North American branch of the Toyota Motor company claimed that Ibrahimshah Shahulhameed illegally accessed one of its websites, after being dismissed from his contracting job on August 23rd.
Within hours of his dismissal, Shahulhameed is said to have logged into the toyotasupplier.com website without authorisation, and spent hours downloading proprietary plans for parts, designs and pricing information.
The website is used by Toyota’s suppliers to exchange highly sensitive information with the company about current and future products.
Toyota claims that if the information were shared with competitors, or made public, “it would be highly damaging to Toyota, and its suppliers, causing immediate and irreparable damage.”…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
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