487 GB in Nine Days:
How the Kawasaki Motors Europe Breach Became 2024's Loudest Motorcycle Crash
"In early September 2024 it took the RansomHub gang just one stolen VPN credential to siphon 487 GB of Kawasaki Motors Europe's most sensitive data—then auction it off to the highest bidder."
Key Takeaways
- 487 GB of data exfiltrated in just 9 days, including 4.1 million rows of dealer financing data
- Single VPN credential compromise led to complete network infiltration across 24 EU countries
- RansomHub's 210+ victims in 7 months, making it the new LockBit successor
From Phish to Public Dump
| Date (2024) | Event |
|---|---|
| 02 Sept (morning) | RansomHub affiliate sends spear-phish to KME IT admin; link harvests VPN + AD creds |
| 02–05 Sept | Lateral movement; 487 GB of dealer contracts, banking files, warranty claims and payroll exfiltrated |
| 06 Sept | RansomHub posts proof-of-theft screenshots on dark-web leak site; demands undisclosed ransom |
| 10 Sept | Kawasaki isolates every European server—"cleansing process" begins |
| 14 Sept | RansomHub publishes full 487 GB after KME refuses to pay; data includes directories labelled "Financing Kawasaki", "Dealer Lists", "COVID" and live September spreadsheets |
| 18 Sept | Company announces > 90% server functionality restored; dealer portals back online |
"Kawasaki Motors Europe…was the subject of a cyber-attack which…resulted in the company's servers being temporarily isolated until a strategic recovery plan was initiated later on the same day."
—Kawasaki official statement, 12 Sept 2024
Why 487 GB Matters
Financial Data Exposure
4.1 million rows of dealer financing data (names, addresses, bank sort codes)
Warranty & Fraud Risk
Warranty claims dating back to 2017—perfect for cloning VINs and odometer fraud
Employee Privacy Breach
Payroll CSVs with staff tax IDs and home addresses across 24 EU countries
Operational Impact
Live dealer portals down for 10 days—sales staff reverted to fax and phone quotes
"Among the exposed files are critical business documents, including financial information, banking records, dealership details, and internal communications…timestamps showing activity as recent as early September."
—HackRead analysis of leaked archive
RansomHub Is the New LockBit
victims in 7 months
(Feb–Aug 2024)
payload evades EDR
(Injects into svchost)
Japanese conglomerate hit
(After Microchip & Kadokawa)
According to joint FBI / CISA advisory: RansomHub has become the fastest-growing ransomware operation, with Golang-based payload that evades most EDR by injecting into svchost; double-extortion baked in.
The One Missing Control
Kawasaki's own press release never mentions multi-factor authentication on the compromised VPN gateway.
"Kawasaki's stance…suggests they chose not to negotiate with attackers, prioritising system restoration. The lesson is clear: robust identity controls must be in place before the breach, not after."
—Jason Soroko, Senior Fellow at Sectigo (via HackRead)
Four NIST-Aligned Fixes That Close the Door
| Control | NIST CSF ID | What Kawasaki Should Do Next |
|---|---|---|
| Phishing-resistant MFA | PR.AC-7 | Roll out FIDO2 security keys for all VPN and Azure AD logins; no SMS, no push-approval |
| Zero-trust network segmentation | PR.AC-5 | Put finance & warranty servers in separate VLANs with micro-segmentation gateways |
| 14-day patch SLA | PR.IP-12 | Subscribe to CISA KEV; force-patch VPN appliances within two weeks of CVE drop |
| Immutable, off-line backups | PR.IP-4 | Store daily Veeam replicas in S3 Object Lock; test bare-metal restore every 30 days |
The €850 Million Password
RansomHub spent nine days inside Kawasaki's network, methodically copying 487 GB of the most sensitive data a motorcycle empire possesses. But the entire breach hinged on a single moment—an IT admin typing eight characters into a fake login page.
Think about that: An €850 million-a-year company, thousands of employees, decades of engineering excellence—all undermined by a password that probably took less time to steal than it takes to start a motorcycle.
The Real Question
If your entire business can be downloaded in 9 days,
how many passwords away from disaster are you?
References
SecurityWeek – Ransomware group leaks data allegedly stolen from Kawasaki Motors
Published: September 2024
View SourceCyber Management Alliance – September 2024 major cyber attacks and data breaches
Published: October 2024
View SourceDon't Become the Next Data Dump
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