Nissan has confirmed that customer data belonging to approximately 21,000 individuals was exposed following unauthorized access to a self-managed GitLab instance operated by Red Hat Consulting.

The breach originated from a third-party development environment rather than Nissan’s internal systems, highlighting persistent risks associated with software development infrastructure and vendor-managed repositories.

Modern enterprises increasingly rely on external vendors and shared development platforms to build and maintain customer-facing systems.

Source code repositories such as GitLab often store far more than code, including documentation, configuration details, internal communications, and, in some cases, sensitive customer data. When these environments are improperly secured, they become attractive targets for extortion-focused threat actors.

In late September, attackers gained unauthorized access to a Red Hat Consulting GitLab instance used during development work for Nissan-related projects.

A group calling itself Crimson Collective subsequently attempted to extort Red Hat, claiming the theft of approximately 570 GB of compressed data spanning 28,000 private repositories.

Red Hat notified Nissan of the incident on October 3. Nissan later confirmed that some of the compromised repositories contained personal data belonging to customers of Nissan Fukuoka Sales, formerly known as Fukuoka Nissan Motor.

The compromised GitLab instance was described as “self-managed,” meaning it was operated directly by Red Hat rather than hosted on GitLab’s managed cloud service.

According to Nissan, the exposed data included:

No payment card data or authentication credentials were stored in the affected repositories, and Nissan stated that no additional customer systems were impacted.

The attackers’ extortion claims referenced infrastructure access, but Nissan reported no evidence that its operational environments were compromised.

Approximately 21,000 Nissan customers were affected, prompting regulatory notification and customer outreach.

While the exposed data does not include financial credentials, it remains sufficient for targeted phishing, social engineering, and identity-based fraud attempts.

The incident also underscores how development environments can quietly accumulate sensitive information that falls outside traditional data protection monitoring.

This breach reinforces a recurring industry lesson: source code repositories are high-value targets, even when they are not production systems.

Organizations often treat development tooling as lower-risk environments, yet attackers increasingly exploit these platforms to harvest data, intellectual property, and leverage extortion pressure without deploying ransomware.

Security analysts consistently warn that development repositories require the same access controls, monitoring, and data minimization practices as production systems.

Limiting the storage of personal data in code repositories and enforcing strict audit logging can significantly reduce exposure when breaches occur.