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The story
The website of the hacker group that had demanded a ransom over its cyberattack on GMO Internet went offline in the early hours of October 28. GMO is offering a ¥150 million bounty for information, and the thread saw both a punitive mood — “wouldn’t mind if someone found them and dished out some vigilante justice” — and voices praising them as “a modern Robin Hood.” The article doesn’t clarify the attacker’s nationality or whether it was a lone individual or a group, and on the thread, theories suspecting an insider (based on Japanese-language comments left in the attack code) crossed paths with theories suspecting a hacker group from overseas.
Published 10/28 (Wed) 16:21
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In the case of the cyberattack on GMO Internet’s systems, it has come to light that the website of the hacker group that had demanded a ransom from GMO has been taken down.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Torture that absolutely never kills them sounds about right
They've obviously planned for that — that's why the bounty's so huge, to get them to sell out their buddies lol
It says it's a US server
Could just be a rented server — doesn't mean they're actually from that country
Is that what they're going for?
Nah, won't happen
There'd be retaliation from their buddies, and it's not like there's a plea deal waiting if they get caught
Everyone in the country's on the hackers' side, take down that corrupt company!
Basically the Ishikawa Goemon of the Reiwa era 🤣 (a legendary Edo-period outlaw who stole from the rich)
Might get raided at dawn lol
Maybe the culprit's the Mangamura type (the operator behind the infamous pirated-manga site)
Judging from the president's posts on X, the reputational damage is immeasurable
Reading the president's post, it sounds like they even know the victim's age
Deliberately visit the phishing site and enter a dummy account's ID and password
When they break in using that dummy account, have a trap file ready that looks like personal data, with spyware baked into it
Infect the hacker back with the spyware, spy on them to track down their identity, then crush them
What do you think?
Apparently you can't legally do that in Japan though
With a bounty on the line, if real hackers get serious about it, that could actually happen
This culprit does seem to be acting pretty half-assed anyway
A rented server, seriously lol
I'd guess they hijacked it
Could also be a trap…
There's been no official announcement, right?
Were you using Onamae's VPS? (Onamae.com, a GMO-affiliated domain/hosting service)
You'll never be able to turn it on again, ever
Just buy a new PC
Would Chinese or Russian hackers really use something like that as a matter of course?
Isn't that a false flag?
That "program" thing is just a JS comment, right?
You wouldn't leave comments like that in the first place
When I heard that, I wondered — if they had an AI build the Japanese-language site, couldn't the AI have just written the comments in Japanese too?
Background and Key Points of Debate
For a company like GMO to put up a bounty on its own, without waiting for an official investigation, is a move closer to tactics seen in overseas ransomware responses, and it’s unusual for a Japanese company. The biggest point of disagreement on the thread is the profile of the culprit: because the attack code contained Japanese-language comments, some suspect an insider or a Japanese national, while others suspect an organized hacker group from abroad — and the article doesn’t confirm either theory. It’s also unclear whether the near-simultaneous takedown of the ransom site itself was a direct result of GMO’s bounty or came from some other pressure, and the thread’s speculation doesn’t settle that either. The comments praising the hacker group as a “Robin Hood” figure stem from the premise that the victimized company’s image was already poor to begin with — it’s easy to misread this as the thread endorsing the attack itself, which it isn’t.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “GMO Attack: Hacker Group’s Site Goes Down in the Early Hours Today — GMO Offers a ¥150 Million Bounty for Information.”
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