Japan: Toyota Motor Corp. halted production operations on Tuesday in their Japan factories due to a system glitch, said the company spokesperson, as per a Bloomberg report. The Japanese automaker has said that 12 out of 14 plants in the country are affected and 25 assembly lines across the plants have been halted. The company has denied a possible cyberattack.
“At this point we do not believe a cyberattack is responsible,” the Toyota spokesperson said.
The system glitch, as per the company spokesperson, as of now appears limited to Japanese plants. It’s not yet clear when operations will resume, they said. The Miyata plant in Fukuoka prefecture and Daihatsu Motor Co.’s Kyoto operations remain unaffected.
Toyota’s shares dropped over 0.7 per cent on Tokyo markets, reversing an earlier increase, as per the news agency.
It also noted that back in February 2022, the carmaker had to close all 14 of its domestic plants due to a ransomware attack on one of its suppliers. This incident took several days to recover from and impacted roughly 5 per cent of Toyota’s production for that month.
In July, a suspected ransomware attack originating from Russia disrupted operations at Nagoya, Japan’s largest port, the report further said. Despite its heavy reliance on the port, Toyota has said that while shipments were briefly halted, production remained unaffected.