Top electric car charger firm confirms data breach, tells users to be on their guard

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A third-party service provider was snooping around DCS

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  • DCS reported a data breach caused by unusual behavior from a third-party support provider
  • Only names and emails were accessed; no financial data was stored or compromised
  • Fewer than ten customers were affected; authorities and partners have been notified

Digital Charging Solutions (DCS), a German company building public charging solutions for car manufacturers, fleet managers and EV drivers, has warned its customers it suffered a rather bizarre data breach that didn’t include a malicious third party, or a disgruntled insider.

In a data breach notification letter sent to multiple car manufacturers, including BMW and Kia, the company said it had observed “irregularities” in the way one of its third-party service providers handled its data records.

It did not name the partner in question but said that the service provider “supports us in the area of customer support and is therefore in principle authorized to view customer data for these purposes,” the notification, machine-translated, reads.

Individual customer data

The company's investigation showed the service provider needlessly viewed “individual customer data,” DCS said, adding that it is now working with the company’s management to clarify what happened.

Additional security measures are already in place, it added, and stressed that law enforcement and relevant data protection authorities were alerted.

“According to previous findings the number of concretely affected customers lies in the single-digit range,” the letter further states.

“They have already been informed separately.” The data that this cheeky third party viewed included names and email addresses. Individual, complete payment data, was not accessed since DCS does not store, or process, this type of information.

Digital Charging Solutions has more than a million customers in Europe, offering access to nearly one million public EV charge points.

It has around 350 employees, and generates an estimated annual revenue of $142.7 million, with its partners including some of the largest automakers and fleet operators, delivering white-label charging services and fleet management tools.

Via The Register

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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