Days after a group claimed to have successfully ransomed Bandai Namco in a digital attack, the company confirmed that it “experienced unauthorized access by this party” on July 3 and is currently investigating the cause.
According to Bandai, this ransomware attack, which was assumedly done by the ALPHV or BlackCat group that claimed responsibility for the attack on July 11, affected several segments of the company across Asia, excluding Japan.
The company has already taken action to cut off access from further attacks and is looking into just what information, such as customer data and internal documents could have been affected.
“After we confirmed the unauthorized access, we have taken measures such as blocking access to the servers to prevent the damage from spreading,” Bandai Namco said. “In addition, there is a possibility that customer information related to the Toys and Hobby business in Asian regions (excluding Japan) was included in the servers and PCs, and we are currently identifying the status about existence of leakage, scope of the damage, and investigating the cause.”
If that initial assessment remains true, customers from Bandai’s Hobby sites and stores might have had some data acquired by the ransomware group, though it could be nothing or end up as something more as the investigation continues.
Bandai is bringing in external organizations to strengthen its own security and take measures to prevent something like this from happening again, while also working to find out what sort of information was taken. The company will disclose the investigation results when it deems appropriate to keep customers in the loop.
This is not the first ransomware attack to pop up within the gaming and gaming adjacent space recently, as both Capcom and CD Projekt Red suffered similar attacks of varying severity last year.
