Following a security flaw, the vehicle rental company saw the personal data of many customers being stolen.
If you have already rented or created an account at Hertz, your personal information may be now in the wild. The company, which is one of the five largest vehicle rental groups in Europe, has recently been the victim of a massive security flaw. In question: the involvement of an external supplier to the company whose access to the base of Hertz customers would have been compromised.
Although the company did not wish to be expressed on the number of customers concerned by this hacking, the first estimates seem high. The precise techcrunch site In particular that this hacking would concern customers who have an Hertz account in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Europe. According to Hertz, the flaw would receive 3,400 customers in Maine in particular, but it is obvious that this figure is actually certainly higher.
A Russian gang could be the cause of hacking
The safety breach would have taken place at the end of 2024. If the latter again made the news, it is because the company Hertz has recently published An official press release On the situation which recognizes a massive hacking of the company and the data concerned.
According to Hertz, the data collected during the attack is numerous and of various forms. We find in particular the names, birth dates, driving license information and especially banking information (such as credit card numbers) of company customers. Hertz nevertheless declares that the safety breach has since been resolved: “Although Hertz is not aware of any abusive use of personal information for fraudulent purposes related to the event, we encourage people likely to be concerned, as a good practice, to remain vigilant as to the possibility of fraud or errors by examining the account statements” said the company spokesperson.
The software implicated in the attack, Cleo, is not at its first vulnerability. Already in October 2024, nearly 60 companies had been victims of a massive piracy of Cleo. Thought as a file transfer software, the latter had been diverted from its original operation by a group of Russian computer hackers.
How to protect yourself in front of the massive hacking of Hertz?
If you have a customer account at Hertz, your first emergency is to consult your customer account On the official site of the rental company. Then check the latest transactions made to make sure that no manipulation has been made on your account (and take advantage of it to change your identifiers by the way). If you have a payment card already recorded on the site, we also advise you to delete it in order to be certain that no one else can use it in the short term.
If however, you have doubts about operations carried out on your account, it is always possible to contact the after-sales service of Hertz to obtain more information on the situation and the safety of your account. We also advise you to be very careful about the future emails that you will receive from the company since the hackers may well imitate the lessor and try to join you by the coming months to scam you.