BMW Loses All Customers Data To Everest Ransomware

Looks like all your sensitive travel, movement data sitting inside your BMW vehicle is in the hands of third party cyber terrorists

Recently, BMW was targeted by the Everest ransomware group, which claimed to have gained access to approximately 600,000 rows of internal data and threatened to release it publicly via a countdown. While the authenticity of the incident remains to be further verified, it has already sparked widespread alarm within the cybersecurity and automotive industry.

Did you know that this 109-year-old car and motorsport manufacturer appeared on the ransomware group’s dark leak blog on Sunday.

With very little information provided on the public portion of its onion site, Everest states that it has pilfered an undisclosed amount of “Critical BMW Audit Documents” from the luxury automaker’s servers.

The post also includes a countdown clock, dated September 14th, that, as of Wednesday, shows less than 24 hours left before “the recording” will become unavailable.

The cybercriminals also provide another countdown clock, with just over 48 hours on it, stating a “Company representative should follow the instructions to contact us before time runs out.”

BMW manufactures its own branded vehicles, including its Motorrad motorcycle division, as well as Mini and Rolls-Royce cars, which it acquired in 2003.

In 2024, the premier automaker produced more than 2.4 million cars worldwide, according to Best Selling Cars, with China making 30% of those purchases, and an annual revenue of over €142 million.

Everest did not reveal in its victim post, if any of the purported stolen data contains any private customer information.

Cybernews Senior Information Security Researcher Aras Nazarovas explained that “we need to wait until Everest releases a sample of the alleged solen data to get a better idea of the scope of the breach.”