Cyberattack on SoftBank Unit Affects Local Govt, Corporate Websites

Tokyo, Oct. 7 (Jiji Press)--IDC Frontier Inc., a Tokyo-based subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., announced Wednesday that a glitch occurred in its IDCF Cloud service for local governments and companies on the day, due to unauthorized access from a third party.

While the company did not disclose the clients of the service, many websites, including those of Ibaraki Prefecture, east of Tokyo, the Tokyo city of Kodaira, Tobu Zoo in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, and Jiji Press Ltd., became unable to be viewed or updated.

According to IDC Frontier, the failure occurred at around 3:40 a.m., as an automatic shutdown system was activated following a ransomware attack. The service network was blocked to prevent secondary damage and data leaks.

The company is developing an alternative environment while investigating the cyberattack in detail.

IDC Frontier offers cloud services in three independent regions in eastern Japan and one in western Japan. The glitch occurred in one of the three eastern regions.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]