Volkswagen and Audi are the latest companies to be attacked by hackers

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Hackers are back at it again, and this time they’ve targeted data from massive vehicle manufacturers Volkswagen and Audi. A new report claims that around 3.3 million customers and interested buyers in the United States and Canada were affected by the data breach.

According to Vice, a hacker that goes by the name 000 was able to obtain all of this information by scraping an unsecured Microsoft Azure server. Data stolen includes email addresses, vehicle identification numbers, phone numbers, and physical addresses.

Volkswagen acknowledged the hacker’s attack last week. Earlier this week, Vice was notified that the hackers had put this information up for sale on a popular hacker forum. While most of the data stolen consists of the above categories, nearly 90,000 people’s more sensitive information was compromised.

READ MORE: Volkswagen says it will overtake Tesla in EV sales by 2025

According to Volkswagen, which owns Audi, most of the more sensitive information stolen consists of driver’s license numbers, and most customers affected were Audi owners. The hacker selling this information claims that no Social Security numbers are part of the stolen data, but Volkswagen says something different:

“There were also a very small number of dates of birth, Social Security or social insurance numbers, account or loan numbers, and tax identification numbers.”

Volkswagen website

As of now, Volkswagen has stated that it is sending emails and letters to affected individuals. Additionally, the company is offering free credit monitoring to the 90,000 people whose more sensitive information was compromised.

Hopefully, this attack can serve as a lesson to companies in control of this type of personal information. Data breaches like this are unacceptable and cause a great deal of stress to affected individuals.

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