Hackers had access to Volkswagen IT systems for years

It's about an old series of hacks between 2010 and 2015

No English media has picked this story up, and the other source is Spiegel, but their article is behind a hard paywall.

Here is a Google Translate link,

https://www-zdf-de.translate.goog/nachrichten/wirtschaft/vol...

An attempt at a summary:

> The actors are said to have managed to steal more than 19,000 documents. They were mainly looking for information about the development of petrol engines, gearboxes, dual-clutch transmission systems, e-mobility and fuel cells. Volkswagen noticed in early June 2014 that their IT systems had been hacked. This was because the hackers allegedly made a typo. This typo reportedly caused the IT systems to suddenly start asking for a lot more capacity and that was noticed. Volkswagen then put together a team of security experts to keep an eye on the hackers and take the necessary measures.

> According to the journalists, it was possible to analyze the IP addresses of the hackers and they appeared to come from China. According to Der Spiegel and ZDF, the hackers always stopped their activities at a certain time. That time corresponded to 4 p.m. in the Asian country. This makes the news media suspect that these are Chinese state hackers with an office job and associated office hours.

> Volkswagen has confirmed the hack. The company emphasizes that the attack took place more than ten years ago and that the company has since better secured its IT systems. Volkswagen has not yet gone into the facts in more detail.

At least some PLA hackers are explicitly required to avoid giving away that they're operating from China[1], so the information the article cites about IP addresses and other forensic information makes me wonder if this was a false flag operation.

[1] https://bishopfox.com/blog/the-isoon-disclosure-exploring-th...

The hackers should assume part of the liability for the diesel cheating scandal, too.

would like to interview volkswagen IT department to learn what not to do

Given the incident dates far back this seems like a political piece as the EU and Germany currently push for restricting Chinese EV sales in Europe, so I guess they need to create some outrage. Personally I still believe the European car industry mostly missed the boat on the EV mass market transition (mind you there are electric cars but mostly for top earners) so now they need to push for politics to protect their domestic markets because China seems to be quite ahead in terms of mass market production.