Someone Hacked NHTSA’s Servers

As it turns out, even highway safety regulators are vulnerable to cyber-criminals. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had some of its servers hacked in early August, the agency confirmed on August 6.

The ten servers involved are used for reports from automakers about their plans for recalls, as well as for progress reports on continuing and past investigations. Normally, the information stored on the affected servers is public and can be located along with other information on recalls or defect investigations. But on August 2, the usually public documents became inaccessible.

The blockage was caused by an alert about a "cyber-security incident" from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, an agency spokesman wrote in an emailed statement. The statement said that the episode "was limited in scope, involved systems which host publicly available information," and that no personal or confidential business information had been compromised.

The ten servers that were attacked are no longer connected to the Internet, the agency said, and "countermeasures to return all equipment to normal operation" were under way. It wasn’t clear when the documents would be available again, and an agency spokesman declined to answer questions regarding the source of the attack.