GMO Internet probes suspected breach of its Onamae cloud desktop service
Traders using the service have been told to reset passwords after reports of unauthorized activity on their accounts.
GMO Internet, a Japanese IT and internet services company, is investigating a suspected breach of its Onamae Desktop Cloud service, which supplies virtual desktops to financial traders. The company says an attacker has posted data that appears to relate to its business and customers, though its authenticity is still being checked and the scope of the incident is unclear. Customers have been told to reset passwords after reports of unauthorized operations on trading accounts, and GMO says about 27,000 servers may be affected. The company shut the service on October 21 after an extortion email demanded roughly 8 billion yen, reported the matter to police, and began collecting customer devices to scan for malware. GMO has not publicly tied the breach to Artex, a Chinese AI-assisted penetration testing tool that its own cybersecurity unit recently linked to attacks on Japanese firms.
Why it matters
Financial traders who rely on GMO's virtual desktops now face a shutdown of the service, a password reset, and uncertainty over whether their trading accounts were accessed. The attacker's extortion demand and the posting of data that may relate to the company's customers mean affected users are still waiting to learn the scope of the exposure. GMO has not yet linked the incident to Artex, so the cause remains open.
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