GMO offers $1 million reward after cloud service breach

GMO Internet Group has offered a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of those behind a breach of its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service, as it investigates data published by suspected attackers and possible customer account abuse. The reward program opened October 28 and will run until an arrest, an international wanted notice or October 27, 2027, whichever comes first. GMO said the reward is for tips that help produce one of those outcomes. The company is funding the program and said tips may be submitted anonymously, although recipients must verify their identity before payment. The breach came to light on October 20, when GMO found unauthorized access to the cloud desktop service and malicious programs in some customer server environments. The company shut down servers across the service’s plans starting October 21. It has identified 26,739 servers as potentially affected, a figure that does not represent confirmed infections or the number of customers whose data was exposed. GMO said suspected attackers demanded about 8 billion yen, or roughly $50 million, and threatened to publish customer information and deploy ransomware. The company refused...