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Japan Cyber Watch

Topic

extortion

Analysis

How GMO Fought an Extortion in Public, and Why That Helped the Attackers

GMO Internet answered the extortion of its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud customers with a public campaign: a request for active cyber defense, a CEO blog, a $1 million bounty with daily tip counts and a stream of social media posts. Its customer advice was good. The spectacle around it was, in our view, the worst way to respond to people who need attention.

IncidentsUpdated

GMO's Onamae.com Desktop Cloud Breach: Extortion, a Data Leak, FX Accounts Traded With Stolen Logins, and a $1 Million Bounty

Attackers broke into GMO Internet's Onamae.com Desktop Cloud, a VPS service for MT4/MT5 trading, used saved logins to trade in customers' FX accounts, and are extorting GMO. After GMO refused to pay, they began publishing data on October 27. GMO will pay every user ¥5,000, compensate trading losses, pay more to those whose data is published, and has set up a $1 million bounty.