Panasonic admits intruders were inside its servers for months

Spotted the crack after it ended – still not sure what was lost

Japanese industrial giant Panasonic has admitted it's been popped, and badly.

A November 26 statement [PDF] from the company admits that its network "was illegally accessed by a third party on November 11, 2021". That date has since been revised – the company now says it became aware of the intrusion on the 11th, but that unknown entities had access to its systems from late June to early November.

"After detecting the unauthorized access, the company immediately reported the incident to the relevant authorities and implemented security countermeasures, including steps to prevent external access to the network," the statement adds.

An internal investigation determined "some data on a file server had been accessed during the intrusion".

Panasonic isn't sure what the intruders were able to eyeball. A third-party investigator has been engaged, with a brief to figure out if any customer data or "sensitive information related to social infrastructure" was accessed.

"Panasonic would like to express its sincerest apologies for any concern or inconvenience resulting from this incident," concludes the company's statement, without the usual accompaniment of "we promise to do better in future and keep people informed if we unwittingly sprayed their lives across the internet, in which case we'll try to behave during the class action lawsuit". ®