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The story
Masatoshi Kumagai, president of GMO Internet Group, revealed on his blog that a hacker group had demanded roughly ¥7.9 billion in ransom, but that he refused to pay. After the deadline passed at noon on October 27, the attackers began actually publishing customers’ personal information one record at a time, and the company’s stock price dropped 19% over two days. GMO announced it will launch a bounty program worth a total of $1 million for informants starting at noon on the 28th. On 5ch, discussion centered on how effective police can really be against an attack from overseas, the size of the bounty, and how little compensation is being offered to users whose personal data was leaked.
What people said
"Continued unauthorized manipulation of customers' [systems]"
"Unauthorized disclosure of information on connected customers' PCs, and a ransomware attack"
That same guy said Horiemon [Takafumi Horie] was fine though, and I've just kept ignoring that part the whole time.
LOL, GMO Internet is right there on the list
Exactly this.
They kept ignoring warnings from their own in-house engineers, right?
Clean up your own mess.
This'll probably trigger a change in the law.
If it doesn't, Japan's just going to keep being an easy target.
Who exactly do you think you are to say that
They're saying something about fighting hackers across borders, but that's not realistic.
I don't think anyone overseas is going to lift a finger to help.
Apparently there's a name 'Eiko' involved,
but no matter how much I searched I couldn't find anything more.
They did.
She was even interviewed on the news.
Japan's furious F5-mashing (angrily spamming the refresh key)
After today's noon deadline passed without payment, the attackers retaliated by publishing one customer's personal information, and are threatening to release another one every day from now on.
In the wake of this large-scale unauthorized access and ransomware threat, GMO Internet Group's stock price plunged 19% over two days.
Huh, it hasn't dropped as much as I expected.
I figured it'd hit limit-down.
Apparently if you identify the perpetrator you get ¥100 million.
We are establishing the 'GMO Cybercrime Eradication Bounty' to solicit credible information that helps identify and apprehend those involved and get to the bottom of the case.
The reward is capped at a total of $1 million USD across the whole program, and the dedicated tip line will start accepting information from 12:00 noon (Japan time) on October 28, 2026.
Just give the ¥100 million to the hacker, lol
They're supposedly the top dog in the industry and they're relying on random tipsters, lol
'I want people to have the mindset of protecting their own information themselves.'
It's companies that won't even let you use their service unless you hand over personal info,
and every single one of them has security full of holes, Mr. President.
KADOKAWA: 'We paid up and still got leaked, and we reported it to the police and they still couldn't make an arrest.'
GMO's users couldn't even get their victim reports accepted by the police,
since officially, the 'victim' is GMO, not them.
There's Kumagai, smiling, posting on X first thing in the morning.
Hackers, tremble in your sleep.
Totally flexing that he's unfazed, lol
How is he able to laugh this much? https:/i.imgur.com/GkWneOr.jpeg
An arrest must be close
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20261027-GYT1T00367/
Well, if he admitted it was true, he'd also be admitting to the porn sites and all the kinks that go with them
Background and Key Points of This Story
This incident is believed to be a ‘double-extortion’ style ransomware attack, in which attackers break into a corporate network, steal data, and threaten to publish it unless paid. Because the attackers appear to be based overseas, it’s practically very difficult for Japanese police to track them down, and the thread saw comments like ‘domestic Japanese law doesn’t reach overseas hackers.’ The $1 million bounty GMO has set up is easy to misunderstand — it isn’t a payment to the attacker, but a reward for informants whose tips help lead to an arrest, and it is a separate thing from the roughly ¥7.9 billion ransom that was demanded. It’s also worth remembering that in KADOKAWA’s earlier case of paying a ransom under a similar scheme, paying up prevented neither the data leak nor the need for an arrest — so paying doesn’t necessarily guarantee a resolution.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “GMOƒCƒ“ƒ^[ƒlƒbƒg‘ã•\ŒF’JuƒnƒbƒJ[‚Íâ‘΂ɋ–‚³‚È‚¢AƒnƒbƒJ[‚ð‘ß•ß‚·‚é‚Ì‚Í“ú–{‚Ì‹`–±v“.
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