Nikkei becomes latest major news outlet hit with ransomware

Nikkei Group — one of the world’s largest financial news outlets — announced that its Asia headquarters in Singapore is suffering from a ransomware attack that began on May 13.

The Japanese company, which owns The Nikkei and Financial Times newspapers, said in a statement Thursday that it has reported the attack to Japanese and Singaporean authorities.

While the company claimed that no data leak has been confirmed, it noted that the affected server "likely contained customer data" and that investigators are in the process of “"determining the nature and scope" of the attack. 

“We sincerely apologize for the trouble we’ve caused,” Nikkei’s public relations office said in a statement. “We will take appropriate action in cooperation with relevant authorities and strive to enhance information protection.”

The Nikkei incident is one of several involving news outlets in recent years. 

In June 2021, U.S. media conglomerate Cox Media Group was crippled by a ransomware attack that brought down live streams for radio and TV stations across the country. Cox Media owns 57 radio and TV stations in 20 markets and it was eventually revealed that the attackers were from Iran. 

In January, the Lapsus$ extortion gang attacked Impresa, the largest media conglomerate in Portugal and the owner of SIC and Expresso, the country’s largest TV channel and weekly newspaper, respectively.

In September 2019, a ransomware gang attacked CBS-owned Entercom, the second-largest radio broadcasting network in the US, and brought down several radio stations.

Ransomware attacks temporarily disrupted major TV channels like France’s M6 and The Weather Channel in incidents throughout 2019.