TOKYO - Japanese companies are moving to pay compensation to users following waves of cyberattacks that have disrupted internet services and raised concerns about economic stability, Reuters reported on Monday. GMO Internet said customers would be compensated for losses stemming from unauthorised access following a cyberattack on its foreign exchange trading service, and all customers would receive 5,000 yen ($32) as an initial gesture of good faith, CEO Masatoshi Kumagai said in a blog post on Sunday. Shares of GMO, which had a market value of $2.6 billion as of Friday's close, slumped 11% in Tokyo on Monday morning, compared with flat trading in the benchmark index.
Source: Reuters, Oct 26, Tokyo
Yaani: $2.6 billion is 260 crore US dollars - so a company worth about two hundred and sixty crore dollars lost about a tenth of its market value in one morning of trading after the attack disclosure.
Source: Reuters, Oct 26, Tokyo
The servers at the centre of the incident rent out virtual desktops for automated FX trading, BigGo Finance reported, in a detailed account of the company's October 24 announcement. The unauthorised access was discovered on October 19 after user inquiries, the company confirmed malicious programs planted by a third party on some servers on October 20, and from 4am on October 21 it sequentially shut down servers across all plans. As many as 26,739 servers may have been affected, the servers stored authentication credentials including individual investors' passwords, and accounts opened by users at more than 70 securities and FX firms in Japan and abroad may have been targeted. Compensation covers losses and fees from unauthorised trading, not indirect damages, users will be told the application procedures by November 6, and a free alternative cloud service will be offered for six months to those who request it.
Source: BigGo Finance, Oct 24 (company account)
GMO Internet has asked the Japanese government to apply cyber defence measures in response to the attack, Reuters reported, and BigGo Finance said the company urgently asked the government to invoke Active Cyber Defense - under which police and the Self-Defense Forces would penetrate the attacker's servers and neutralise them - which, if invoked, would be the first application of the measure. The company said it had received a demand for money from a party believed to be behind the attack, along with a threat to disclose company and customer information if it did not comply; it said it would not comply and would respond in coordination with police and other authorities, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters, Oct 26, Tokyo
What is solid
- GMO Internet will compensate customers for losses from unauthorised access to its FX trading service and pay every customer 5,000 yen ($32) as an initial gesture of good faith (Reuters, citing CEO Masatoshi Kumagai's Sunday blog post; BigGo Finance's report of the company's announcement agrees on the 5,000 yen payment and loss compensation)
- GMO shares slumped 11% in Tokyo on Monday morning; the company's market value was $2.6 billion as of Friday's close (Reuters)
- Japan said on Friday it would set up a team to simulate cyberattacks using AI to identify weaknesses in technology systems (Reuters)
- Government and company websites in Japan, Europe and elsewhere went offline last week after critical vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language prompted millions of hacking attempts (Reuters)
What is only claimed
- The detailed server figures - up to 26,739 servers possibly affected, discovery on October 19, shutdowns from October 21 and accounts at 70+ firms possibly targeted - come from BigGo Finance's report of GMO's own announcement; Reuters' Monday report confirms the compensation and the attack on the FX service but does not itself give those server numbers, so Awaaz Punjab attributes them to the company account as reported by BigGo
AI is making cybercrime faster, experts say
Japanese companies are being roiled by attacks, with experts saying AI is helping automate tasks from scanning for software vulnerabilities to crafting phishing campaigns, making cybercrime faster, cheaper and harder to detect, Reuters reported. The compensation move comes after Japan said on Friday it would set up a team to simulate cyberattacks using AI to identify weaknesses, as organisations scrambled to curtail risks from flaws in the PHP programming language that underpins much of the internet.
Source: Reuters, Oct 26, Tokyo