Daiichi Kosho warns 8.7 million customers may be exposed in supplier malware breach

Supplier malware incident

Daiichi Kosho said personal information for 8.7 million customers may have been leaked after a malware infection at supplier Nippon Columbia Group. In a statement published on October 8, the company said NCG found the infection on an employee computer between October 1 and October 2.

The karaoke company said data tied to outsourced work had been temporarily stored on the infected computer and could have been sent to external parties. Possible exposed data includes registered names, genders, dates of birth, email addresses, and telephone numbers, but Daiichi Kosho said this has not been verified.

Customers and brands affected

Big Echo accounts accounted for 5.6 million of the potentially affected customers. The report also listed 3.5 million customers tied to DK Dining, another company in the same corporate branch. Other sister companies that could be affected include Mega Big, Banana Club, Karaoke Club Dam, and B-Garage.

Daiichi Kosho opened a toll-free helpline for concerned customers. The report also noted that Infosecurity Magazine said NCH had reset all compromised passwords.

Advice for customers

Daiichi Kosho urged customers to be cautious about suspicious correspondence and not to open unfamiliar links or attachments. The company said the combination of names, dates of birth, email addresses, and phone numbers could help scammers craft convincing phishing emails, text messages, and other communications even if payment card or password theft is not confirmed.

The incident follows other cybersecurity events in Japan. A separate incident hit cloud provider IDC Frontier on October 7 and disrupted services for hundreds of organizations, including police, a press agency, a credit card company, and a fan messaging platform for a female J-pop idol group.

Sources: Cybernews