Nikkei discloses third breach in a month, exposing 1.8M records

Japanese publishing and financial-information group Nikkei Inc. has disclosed yet another data breach — its third in roughly a month. This time 1.83 million personal data records were affected.

The company stresses that only a portion of the records contained identifying information, while most did not. According to Nikkei, 150,000 records held at least one of the following data types: full name, email address, physical address, telephone number, and date of birth. Email addresses appeared in 120,000 records. The remaining 1.68 million records contained no identifiers, and no credit card information was exposed.

How the breach happened

According to a notice published late last week, attackers used stolen credentials to access a development system inside the company's network during the early morning hours of October 7. Through it they exposed personal information that Nikkei stored in the cloud.

The company revoked the abused credentials and notified the Personal Information Protection Commission on October 11. Nikkei is still assessing the scope of the incident and notes that, as of October 16, it had found no evidence the accessed information had been misused or leaked online. There were likewise no signs of system compromise, data tampering, or service outages. Affected individuals will receive individual notifications.

"We are working urgently to establish the extent of the damage and determine the cause, and will implement the necessary measures to strengthen security," the company said.

Third incident in a row

Nikkei is Japan's largest business-focused media group and the owner of the Financial Times. It employs over 10,100 people and reports annual revenue of $2.5 billion (¥393.8 billion).

This is the third cybersecurity incident the group has disclosed recently. Earlier this month Nikkei reported a breach that occurred in late July, when attackers compromised an employee's Google Workspace account and accessed personal data belonging to staff and business partners. In September the company announced that threat actors had hijacked another employee's Microsoft 365 account and used it to send spear-phishing emails to its staff.

Source: Bleeping Computer