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Japanese firm Koei Tecmo hit by cyber attack

Japanese firm Koei Tecmo hit by cyber attack

Another Japanese publishing giant has been hit by a cyber attack.

This time around it's Koei Tecmo that's the victim, with the company announcing on December 25th that its UK subsidiary Koei Tecmo Europe Limited had been hit, with some user data possibly being stolen in the process. Specifically, the site's forum had been breached with user data including account names, passwords and email addresses thought to be the information stolen.

There's no word yet on who instigated this attack; no demands have been made and Koei Tecmo says the possibility of ransomware being "low".

In the meantime, the company has taken down its Koei Tecmo Europe website and its forums. At the time of writing both of these are still offline. The firm has also taken the required step of notifying data protection enforcement in line with the EU's GDPR laws.

"Koei Tecmo apologies for the concern and inconvenience this may be causing to its customers and business partners," the firm wrote.

"For individuals who have had their e-mail addresses leaked, Koei Tecmo is determined to take the appropriate measures and act in good faith hereafter. At this point, there are no issues or problems with game development and other business endeavors. In addition, the impact of this issue is determined to be minimal in the FY2020 financial results of the Koei Tecmo group. Both Koei Tecmo and [Koei Tecmo Europe] will work to prevent similar issues from occurring, and further strengthen its security system while simultaneously taking strict actions against illegal acts such as unauthorised access."

In November 2020, Capcom was the victim of a cyber attack, too.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.