Honda Motor suspended some of its car and motorcycle production worldwide as it dealt with a suspected cyber attack.
A spokesman told Reuters the suspected attack affected production globally on Monday, forcing some plants to stop operations as the company needed to ensure that its quality control systems were not compromised.
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Honda suspecteds the ransomware hit the company's internal servers, the spokesman told the news agency.
Production resumed at most of the plants by Tuesday but its main US plant in Ohio, as well as those in Turkey, India and Brazil, remained suspended as the ransomware disrupted production systems, he said.
Separately, citing a Honda statement, TheDetroitBureau.com said the attack began Sunday, 7 June and the automaker "experienced a disruption in its computer network that has caused a loss of connectivity, thus impacting our business operations. Our information technology team is working quickly to assess the situation".
The report said Honda officials had declined to provide additional details about which of the company's global operations were impacted by what was being referred to as the Ekans malware on a number of websites devoted to cybersecurity. One tech site, known as BleepingComputer, had indicated it was a version of the well-known Snake ransomware, itself named after a character in the Pokemon game.
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By GlobalData"We're not saying anything beyond (the original) statement right now," the company said in a statement to TheDetroitBureau.com.
That report cited website Jalopnik as indicating at least some of the production sites operated by Honda of America Manufacturing, such as its original plant in Marysville, Ohio, had production halted
Britain's Sky News in turn had indicated the malware attack had impacted Honda IT networks in Japan and Europe, though it was not clear if production has been impacted in those regions.
TheDetroitBureau.com said, if the Ekans attack held true to the typical ransomware model it would require the company to pay a substantial fee before the perpetrators would relinquish control. In some cases, ransomware would completely delete a victim's data and could be used to cause physical damage to computer systems under attack.
Honda was also attacked in 2017, that report said, by another ransomware program known as WannaCry.
Other automakers impacted included Renault and Nissan, according to Reuters at the time.
