Report: FromSoftware Owner Kadokawa Corp. Hacked, Hackers to Release 1.5TB of Data on July 1 If Ransom Isn’t Paid

It seems another video game company company has been hacked, and this time, it’s Kadokawa Corporation, the owner of FromSoftware and Acquire.

The hacking group gave a deadline of July 1, 2024 and if their ransom isn’t met, they will release 1.5TB of data which consists of:

• Contracts
• DocuSigned papers
• Various legal papers
• Platform users related data (personal info, payments, emails, contracts, etc.)
• Business plans (presentation, emails, offers)
• Project-related data (coding, emails, payments, etc.)
• Financial data (payments, transfers, planning, etc.)
• Other internal-use-only papers and confidential data

According to the message by the hackers, they contacted Kadokawa management to make a deal with them regarding data protection and network decryption. Per the hacking group, “First of all, Kadokawas IT department detected our presence within the network 3 days before we had encrypted the network. Admins tried to kick us out from the network, one of our server IP’s was blocked, they have tried to change admin credentials, but we have managed to set undetectable access to the network. We have continued downloading even after Kadokawa admins detected us. They were unable to detect and stop outgoing traffic, because our downloading scripts kept working even after the server’s IP was blocked. 1 day before encryption we have detected enormous Kadokawa admins activity trying to stop us unsuccessfully.”

The group adds that they are people of business and are only interested in money. While Kadokawa has tried to settle, the group said the amount of money offered is extremely low for “this kind of company.” Furthermore, the group is offering their help to make Kadokawa’s network better.

You can check out the complete letter by the hackers below:

While there is the obvious risk of video game assets, plans and whatnot being compromised if this hack is legit, that’s nothing compared to the lives of people who’s data will be made public, and that isn’t just the employees, as the data suggests it involves clients, and other people as well.

Of course, the most recent high profile video game company that got hacked was Marvel’s Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games in December of last year. This ransomware that wasn’t paid led to the hackers outing Insomniac’s project roadmap, as well as loads of in-development footage of Marvel’s Wolverine.

No word yet on what Kadokawa has to say about this, but if the company announces anything, we’ll let our readers know.

This ransomware for FromSoftware’s parent company comes hot at the heels of Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree release. Earlier today, Bandai Namco Entertainment, publisher of Elden Ring, announced the DLC has already sold-in five million units in its first three days of availability.

[Thanks, FalconFeeds]

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