Just a few hours ago, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco proudly announced the excellent commercial result of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the expansion that sold five million units in its first three days of availability.
The studio's parent company, Kadokawa Corporation, must certainly be pleased with the sales. However, they have also just discovered that they were hacked. The news comes from threat intelligence platform Falcon Feeds, which tweeted a snapshot of the message shared by the hackers:
Our team gained access to the Kadokawa network almost a month ago. It took some time, because of the language, to figure out that Kadokawa subsidiaries' networks were connected to each other and to get through all the mess Kadokawa's IT department made there. We have discovered that Kadokawa network's architecture was not organised properly. It was different networks connected to the one big Kadokawa's infrastructure being controlled through global control points, such as eSXI and V-sphere. Once we have gained access to the control center, we have encrypted the whole network (Dwango, NicoNico, Kadokawa, and other subsidiaries). The second part of our Team downloaded about TB1,5 of data from the networks.
The parent company of FromSoftware confirmed the leak in a brief press release:
On Saturday, June 8, the servers located in the KADOKAWA Group’s data center experienced a significant cyberattack including ransomware, targeting Niconico and the related services.
KADOKAWA is currently considering solutions and workarounds quickly on a company-wide basis in order to normalize its systems and business activities. KADOKAWA is investigating the possibility for information leakage with the support of external professional organizations.
KADOKAWA does not retain any credit card information of the Group’s customers, including Niconico service users, in its system, and therefore, no credit card information will have been leaked. More accurate information based on the investigation results is expected to be available in July.
Other than FromSoftware, Kadokawa owns ACQUIRE, the game studio that made Tenchu, Way of the Samurai, and Octopath Traveler. Earlier this month, the team launched the real-time RPG Scars of Mars on Steam.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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