Japanese Internet Giant Hit by Cyberattack; Hackers Demand Bitcoin Ransom, Company Executive Refuses to Pay

According to Nada News on October 28, a cloud desktop service operated by Japan’s GMO Group suffered an unauthorized hacker intrusion, potentially affecting up to 26,739 servers. In its ransom note, the attacker explicitly demanded payment in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), claiming that GMO Group’s crypto exchange, GMO Coin, could immediately mobilize funds. The hackers also threatened to execute abnormal transactions continuously within infected user accounts and publicly disclose user data. The initial ransom demand stood at $50 million, later reduced to $1 million. GMO Group’s representative Masatoshi Kumagai publicly stated the company would not comply, confirming no payment had been made. GMO Coin separately verified that no abnormal activity had occurred in customer accounts. Although the hackers subsequently released some data and announced plans to update the leaked content daily, the domain used to publish this information was taken offline early on October 28.