Japanese media conglomerate Kadokawa and several of its properties have been offline for four days following a major cyber attack.
A Sunday statement posted on a temporary website revealed that the group detected an issue preventing access to multiple servers early on Saturday, June 8.
“In response to this incident, we immediately shut down the relevant servers to protect the data,” the statement reads (after machine translation), adding that management has concluded there is “a high possibility that we were the victim of a cyber attack.”
Kadokawa’s corporate site remains down, with a static HTML replacement in place, while video-sharing site Niconico currently displays only a statement indicating it is undergoing maintenance and an apology for the inconvenience.
In a late Monday Xeet, the service advised that its team is working on a complete rebuild while also trying to determine the nature of the attack.
This announcement followed an earlier status report indicating that cyber attacks were ongoing, with no resolution in sight.
When operational, Niconico resembles YouTube and is Japan’s second-most-popular video-sharing site. Its absence is being keenly felt by both audiences and creators who rely on it for income.
Another Kadokawa brand affected by the cyber attack is the e-commerce service Ebiten, which currently displays a page informing customers that existing orders will be fulfilled, but confirmation emails cannot be sent.
The page also reassures customers that Ebiten does not store credit card details on its own servers.
At the time of writing, Kadokawa has not provided details of the attack or any indication that it has developed an understanding of the incident.
Ebiten’s ability to ship products suggests that back-office applications remain operational, indicating that web infrastructure may be the problem.
However, none of the statements from the impacted brands suggest that restoration will be swift.
