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Toyota Motor Corp said it will suspend domestic factory operations on Tuesday, losing around 13,000 cars of output, after a supplier of plastic parts and electronic components was hit by a suspected cyberattack.
No information was immediately available about who was behind the possible attack or the motive. The attack comes just after Japan joined Western allies in clamping down on Russia after it invaded Ukraine, although it was not clear if the attack was at all related.
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People walk past the Toyota logo at a showroom in Tokyo. File photo: AP
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his government would investigate the incident and whether Russia was involved.
“It is difficult to say whether this has anything to do with Russia before making thorough checks,” he told reporters.
Kishida on Sunday announced that Japan would join the US and other countries in blocking some Russian banks from accessing the Swift international payment system. He also said Japan would give Ukraine US$100 million in emergency aid.
An official at the supplier, Kojima Industries Corp, said it appeared to have been the victim of some kind of cyberattack.
An official from Toyota described it as a “supplier system failure”.
The company does not yet know if the halt at its 14 plants in Japan, which account for about a third of its global production, will last more than a day, the official added.
Some plants operated by Toyota’s affiliates Hino Motors and Daihatsu are included in the shutdown.
Toyota, which has experienced cyberattacks in the past, is a pioneer of Just-In-Time manufacturing with parts that arrive from suppliers going straight to the production line rather than being stockpiled.
State actors have launched cyberattacks on Japanese corporations in the past, including an attack on Sony Corp in 2014, which exposed internal data and shut down computer systems.
The US blamed North Korea for that attack, which came after Sony released “The Interview”, a comedy about a plot to assassinate the regime’s leader Kim Jong-un.
Toyota’s production halt comes as the world’s biggest carmaker is already tackling supply chain disruptions around the world caused by the Covid pandemic, which has forced it and other carmakers to curb output.
Toyota this month also saw some production stopped in North America due to parts shortages caused by the Canadian trucker protests.
Keyword: Toyota suspends Japan factory operations after suspected cyberattack