Kadokawa speaks out after the problems caused by the cyber attack on its servers

Kadokawa Corporation issued a statement on its temporary website on Friday to announce the continued suspension of video services Niconico of its subsidiary Dwango, after the cyber attack on June 8, this in order to thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident, which is expected to take at least a month.

In a separate statement, Kadokawa It also acknowledged that other business operations were affected, including publishing, merchandise and accounting systems. This will cause delays in the launch of some publications and products.

Kadokawa notified the police of the situation on June 9 and consulted outside specialists. Kadokawa also notified the Kanto Local Finance Office.

Kadokawa research results

The head of Niconico, Shigetaka Kuritaand the technology director, Keiichi Suzukigave more details in a video about the impact of the attack on Sunday, as you can see below:

Kadokawa stated that, after confirming that the service outages were due to a large-scale cyberattack, which included the use of ransomware, immediately created an emergency task force to investigate and restore services to the affected servers. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts data or denies services, then demands payment from victims to restore them. The attack seemed to focus on Niconico’s services.

Although the company is still investigating the full extent of the damage, it revealed that The attack had managed to reach the internal network, which led to closure and lack of access to internal systems. Because Niconico’s services depend on public data servers as well as Kadokawa’s private servers, it was concluded that the latter were the target of the attack.

Although the company shut down its own servers to isolate the damage, It was observed that the perpetrator of the cyberattack was remotely restarting those servers to continue the spread of malware. To prevent this, staff physically disconnected the power and communications cables from the servers. Employees were also banned from entering the company’s offices in Kabuki-za, and internal networks and services were disconnected.

Login to Niconico servers

Niconico’s video and live streaming services rely on public cloud servers and were not directly affected by the attack. However, the system that controls the live streaming service is located on the company’s private servers, so time-shifted media may not be accessible.

As of June 14, no breach of personal data, including credit card information, has been confirmed, but the investigation is ongoing. Besides, All programming planned for Niconico will be canceled until the end of July. It is expected that the services of Niconico Manga will return to work at the end of June.

Kadokawa cannot confirm a date for the restoration of all services as the investigation is ongoing, but estimates the investigation will last more than a month. Services will be gradually restored during this time.

Effects on Kadokawa’s business operations

The cyberattack has also affected other Kadokawa business operations, such as the suspension of the national print ordering system, digital production and digital logistics, which is causing a decline in publication releases. As some domestic publishing and production support systems have been suspended, Kadokawa anticipates delays in some new publications and reprints.

In turn, online merchandise orders for stores under the Kadokawa umbrella are also affected, as some systems are unable to receive and ship orders.

Kadokawa apologized for possible delays in payments to its business partners and suppliers, as its accounting systems were also affected by the cyberattack. The company aims to restore core systems and establish a more secure network system by the end of June.

Fountain: ANN