Nissan’s website has been taken down following a cyberattack. The hacker collective Anonymous has claimed responsibility for the outage, citing a protest campaign to save whales and dolphins.
The hacking was targeted at Nissan’s global and Japanese websites. Anonymous says it was acting on behalf of the OpWhales campaign, which seeks to spread awareness about the practice of hunting whales and dolphins for food. Japan, Norway and Iceland are the only three countries in the world where whaling is allowed, and Japan is also the primary dolphin hunting nation in the world today.
It is unclear, however, what link Nissan has to whaling and dolphin hunting, if any. The self-identified “hacktivist” group appears to have targeted Nissan due to its status as a prominent company headquartered Japan. Once its sites were compromised, Nissan took them down voluntarily, saying it wanted to protect customer data from a potential leak.
Anonymous is a leaderless hacker collective that uses their cyber skills for causes it deems are for the greater public good. In recent years, it has gone after those it deems responsible for the shootings in Paris, as well as killings of unarmed African Americans at the hands of US police.
As of the time of this writing, Nissan’s Japanese and global websites are still down and have been for over 24 hours.
Leave a Reply