Japanese Companies Reel as Cyberattacks Continue

More Japanese companies are reporting unauthorized access and potential data breaches, putting millions of customer records at risk and prompting investigations by companies and authorities.

Japanese companies are facing a series of cyberattacks and data breaches that have potentially exposed millions of customer records. [Photo: Akonnchiroll, Wikimedia Commons]

Reports this week involved Daiwa Securities, GMO Research, Rakuten Drive, the Nikkei media group and Yakiniku King. The disclosures followed a major breach at Park24's Times Car service, which potentially affected about 6.6 million accounts.

Park24 disclosed in late September that unauthorized access to the Times Car system had resulted in the theft of information associated with approximately 6.6 million accounts.

The company subsequently said identity-document images had been taken from about 1.6 million accounts.

Scala Communications also disclosed unauthorized access involving its i-ask FAQ system. The incident affected data held for several client companies, including Daiwa Securities and Citizen Watch.

Reports indicate that the compromised system contained hundreds of thousands of inquiry records across the affected clients.

Rakuten Drive, Rakuten Group's cloud-storage service, said attackers accessed stored files belonging to 15,382 users between January and September. The company attributed the access to compromised administrator credentials.

GMO Research & AI also reported unauthorized access involving its infoQ survey service.

The incident potentially affected up to 948,498 users, according to reports based on the company's disclosure.

The series of incidents has heightened concerns about the exposure of personal information held by Japanese companies and their technology providers. Investigations into the causes, scope and potential misuse of the compromised data remain ongoing.