Ford Motor Company Exposes Customer and Employee Data

  • By Dawna M. Roberts
  • Published: Sep 17, 2021
  • Last Updated: Mar 18, 2022

Bleeping Computer reported on Sunday that Ford Motor Company exposed customer and employee data accidentally through a bug on their internal systems.

What Happened?

According to the news report,

“The data exposure stemmed from a misconfigured instance of Pega Infinity customer engagement system running on Ford’s servers.”

The vulnerability was discovered by ethical hackers who discovered the data breach and allowed them to “peek into confidential company records, databases and perform account takeovers.”

The problem stems from CVE-2021-27653, a known configuration issue with Pega Infinity customer management software.

Bleeping Computer shared images of private systems from Ford, such as its internal, ticketing system. In addition, the threat researchers supplied Bleeping Computer with the evidence to support their claims of exposure.

Once attackers gained access through the misconfigured Pega Chat Access Group portal, hackers could then “run queries, retrieve database tables, OAuth access tokens, and perform administrative actions.”

What Was Exposed?

According to threat researchers and Bleeping Computer, the personally identifiable information that was found online through the Ford website included:

  • Customer and employee records.
  • Finance account numbers.
  • Database names and tables.
  • OAuth access tokens.
  • Internal support tickets.
  • User profiles within the organization.
  • Pulse actions.
  • Internal interfaces.
  • Search bar history.

Ford Motor Company Exposes Data

How Did Ford Respond?

After discovering the issue, threat researchers notified Pega, and the company immediately issued a fix for the problem.

At the same time, the group notified Ford using the “HackerOne vulnerability disclosure program.” Unfortunately, Ford did not respond well or in a timely manner. According to the threat researchers:

John Jackson told BleepingComputer in an email interview,

“At one point in time, they completely stopped answering our questions. It took HackerOne mediation to get an initial response on our vulnerability submission from Ford.” 

Incredibly, Ford failed to respond as time went on until HackerOne finally tweeted about the issue online.

Furthermore,

“When the vulnerability was marked as resolved, Ford ignored our disclosure request. Subsequently, HackerOne mediation ignored our request for help disclosing, which can be seen in the PDF.”

continued Jackson,
“We had to wait the full six months to force disclose per HackerOne’s policy out of fear of the law and negative repercussions.”

The only response from Ford was,

“The findings you submitted… are considered private. These vulnerability reports are intended to prevent compromises which may require disclosure.”

Ford claimed that the access point was closed within 24 hours after they received notification. However, threat researchers said they could still access the data for six months afterward.

There is no information on whether or not any bad actors accessed or copied the data before the issue was corrected.

Bleeping Computer repeatedly attempted to get a comment from Ford, but they declined to respond.

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is one of the largest American automobile manufacturers in the country. Henry Ford founded the company in 1903. The company is headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan. They make cars, trucks, tractors, and parts for automobiles and other vehicles.

In 1908 Ford invented the Model T, which quickly became highly desirable. The high demand spurred Ford on to develop mass production warehouses to fill orders. Then in 1913, Ford created the first-ever “moving” assembly line for building vehicles. To increase productivity, Ford began offering laborers $5 to work an 8-hour shift. Current wages were $2.34 for a 9-hour day, so it was easy to find willing workers.

Although a public company, Ford started as a family-owned business, and for many years a Ford descendent has sat at the helm as CEO. Today, William “Bill” Clay Ford Jr holds the position of Executive Chairman, and he owns 6.8 million of stock in Ford Motor Co.

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