Information from over 100000 Dongfeng Citroen buyers stolen by hacker

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai June 25) - There have recently been reports of hackers stealing large amounts of personal data from the official websites of Chinese automotive manufacturers, which they are selling en masse. Wu Di, founder of Internet leak report website WooYun.org, commented on the issue, stating that its magnitude “far surpassed his imagination.”

One of the hackers, who goes by the tag Miaoge, stated that he has access to all of the personal sales data on Dongfeng Citroën’s official website. The hacker uploaded screenshots of some of his victims’ information, revealing personal details including their names, phone numbers and model of choice. The orders were from early May onwards, with the most recent orders from merely five minutes before the posting. The hacker stated he had over 540,670 buyers’ information. He did later add that many of those were repeated information and that the number of buyers’ whose information he had was probably closer to around 100,000.

In addition to buyers’ information, the hacker also claims he has information to people who have left comments on vehicles on the Chinese consumer websites bitauto.com and autohome.com.cn. In response, a representative from bitauto.com stated that they immediately send reviewers’ data directly to the automotive manufacturer, while they themselves save no data on their own website.

When asked why it was so easy to steal information from Dongfeng Citroën’s website, the hacker said that the manufacturer did not do a good job of protecting data on its own website. When asked why, he bluntly stated “they were too lazy.”

Earlier this year in April, a fellow hacker commented that security on Dongfeng Citroën’s website was especially lax, meaning that information from hundreds of dealerships and thousands of buyers would be easy to steal.

Dongfeng Citroën refused to make an official comment on the matter.