IT attack on Jaguar Land Rover: production and sales disrupted

An IT incident has occurred at car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). IT systems have been shut down and production and sales have been affected by disruptions.

On Tuesday, the manufacturer JLR published a brief statement on the matter. "JLR has been impacted by a cyber incident," the company writes. "We have taken immediate action to mitigate the impact by proactively shutting down our systems." JLR is "working diligently to bring our global applications back online in a controlled manner." At this stage, there is no evidence that customer data has been stolen, "but our sales and production have been significantly disrupted."

The company, which belongs to the Indian Tata Group, is not providing any further information. The BBC reports that the two production sites in the UK are affected. However, the impact is global. The BBC states that the attack began on Sunday. This is an important time for car sales in the UK, as the latest batch of new license plates has been available since Monday, September 1. This is traditionally a popular time for consumers to take delivery of a new vehicle.

Workers sent home

Both the Halewood manufacturing plant in Merseyside and the Solihull plant have sent workers home. The company has sent emails to employees telling them not to come to work.

It is not yet clear who is behind the attack. Jaguar Land Rover is also keeping quiet about ransom demands. There is currently no evidence of a data leak on the usual darknet leak sites.

IT attacks with serious consequences are now commonplace. Around two weeks ago, for example, the HR software provider Infoniqa was hit. The perpetrators are said to have copied extensive data.

(dmk)