Japan on Cyberattack Alert as Ransomware Wave Hits Major Brands and Exposes Millions of Records

Japan is facing a widening cybersecurity crisis after a ransomware attack disrupted IDC Frontier’s IDCF Cloud service and a separate wave of breaches put millions of customer records at risk. The latest incident began on Oct. 7, when the SoftBank subsidiary’s cloud outage affected 495 corporate and local-government customers. Railway operators issued warnings as well: JR East said around 6.09 million customer accounts across its services may have been compromised, while JR Kyushu warned that up to 1.3 million customer email addresses could be exposed, including about 1.67 million emails tied to its Eki-net booking platform. Those figures reflect possible exposure, not confirmed theft. On Oct. 14, IDC Frontier said there was no evidence data from affected virtual servers was taken externally, though it found unauthorized queries involving registration information for 48 customers. Separately, a car-sharing incident linked to Park24’s Times Mobility reported exposure on Sept. 25 affecting about 6.6 million accounts and roughly 1.6 million documents, including driver’s licence images.