GMO Internet said on Monday it will compensate customers for losses from unauthorised access to its foreign-exchange trading service, paying every customer 5,000 yen ($32) as what chief executive Masatoshi Kumagai called an initial gesture of good faith, according to Reuters. The company, valued at $2.6 billion at Friday’s close, saw its shares fall 11% in Tokyo on Monday morning against a flat benchmark. GMO said it had received a money demand backed by a threat to disclose company and customer information, which it will not meet, and that it is working with police. Separately, Park24 said on Friday it will pay customers 3,000 yen each after a personal-data breach.
What GMO Announced
According to Reuters, Kumagai announced the payments in a blog post on Sunday. Customers will be compensated for losses stemming from unauthorised access following a cyberattack on the company’s foreign-exchange trading service. Every customer will receive 5,000 yen, described as an initial gesture of good faith.
The report does not set out a further payment schedule, nor does it put a total figure on the compensation. The 5,000 yen payment is presented as an opening step, not as a final settlement of every loss. GMO’s market value stood at $2.6 billion at Friday’s close, before its shares fell 11% in Tokyo on Monday morning while the benchmark index traded flat.
The Demand GMO Refused
GMO said it had received a demand for money from a party believed to be behind the attack, together with a threat to disclose company and customer information if it did not comply. The company said it would not comply with the demand and would respond to the incident in coordination with police and other authorities.
GMO has also asked the Japanese government to apply cyber defence measures in response to the attack. Reuters does not name the party behind the demand, and it does not say what sum was demanded. The refusal matters because paying would not guarantee that stolen information stays private, while refusing invites the threatened disclosure.
Park24’s Separate Payments
Park24, which operates the Times car-sharing service, said on Friday it would make 3,000 yen payments to customers following a personal-data breach. Reuters does not give a customer count or a total cost for those payments, and it does not link the Park24 breach to the attack on GMO.
The two announcements landed days apart and involve different companies, different services and different incidents. What they share is the response: cash payments to customers, rather than a statement alone. That turns a security incident into a direct, measurable cost for the company involved.
Why It Matters
Compensation payments change how a cyberattack is felt. Until now, much of Japan’s recent cyberattack story has been about disruption: websites taken offline, services suspended and emergency systems paused while operators patched or shut down. Payments to customers put a price on the incident itself, and they create a precedent other affected companies will be measured against.
The extortion element raises the stakes further. A demand backed by a threat to publish company and customer information tests whether a victim will pay to keep data private, and GMO’s public refusal, made alongside a police coordination effort, signals that it has chosen the harder path. Reuters also notes the wider driver behind the wave: experts say AI is helping automate tasks from scanning for software vulnerabilities to crafting phishing campaigns, making cybercrime faster, cheaper and harder to detect.
The payments follow Japan’s plan to simulate cyberattacks with AI to find weaknesses before real attackers do, announced on Friday. That plan came as the PHP flaws disclosed last week drew millions of hacking attempts, and as the exploitation wave that followed took government and company sites offline in Japan, Europe and elsewhere.
Background
The flaws in the PHP programming language, which underpins much of the internet, were disclosed last week and prompted millions of hacking attempts that took government and company websites offline in Japan, Europe and elsewhere; on Friday Japan announced a team to simulate cyberattacks using AI to find weaknesses, and on Monday the costs of the wave reached customers directly, with GMO and Park24 both announcing payments.
Source: Reuters
0 Comments