One of the carmaker’s servers had become infected with the Ekans malware, according to security researchers – a type of ransomware that targets industrial control systems used for operating factories, and demands payment to open them up again.

The potential cyberattack was detected in the early hours of Monday morning by security software that attempts to track the ransomware as it spreads through the internet. Analysis was then published on the virustotal.com website.

This is not the first time Honda has been targeted by cyber criminals.

One of the company’s plants at Sayama, Japan, had to temporarily stop production in 2017 after its network was hit by WannaCry ransomware….