Japan cyberattacks push GMO and Park24 toward customer compensation

GMO outlines payments after trading-service attack

Japanese companies are responding to a wave of cyber incidents with compensation plans that could add to the financial cost of protecting customer data. GMO Internet Group said customers would be compensated for losses connected to unauthorized access during an attack on its foreign-exchange trading service. Chief Executive Masatoshi Kumagai also said every customer would receive 5,000 yen as a goodwill payment.

Reuters reported that GMO received a demand for money from a party believed to be behind the attack, along with a threat to release company and customer information. The demand was later described as $50 million in cryptocurrency. GMO said it would not pay and would coordinate its response with police and other authorities. The company did not link the incident to the PHP vulnerabilities discussed elsewhere in the report.

GMO will provide customers with a free alternative service for six months. It said it could not yet calculate the earnings impact of the goodwill payments and loss compensation. Kumagai wrote that company white-hat hackers had found security issues, but that the response was not deep or fast enough.

Park24 takes a separate approach

Park24, operator of the Times car-sharing service, said it would make 3,000-yen payments to customers after a personal-data breach the previous month. The company said it would stop retaining identity-document images after registration verification and expected to book an extraordinary loss of 5.5 billion yen for its response and compensation.

These measures do not mean that every Japanese company is compensating every customer. The report identifies specific commitments by GMO and Park24, with different eligibility and incident details.

Government response and wider exposure

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the government planned an emergency package against cyberattacks. The government also said it would create a team to simulate attacks using AI to find weaknesses in technology systems, as organizations worked to contain risks linked to flaws in the PHP programming language.

Reuters cited TrendAI data showing 723 cybersecurity incidents in Japan in the year to October 20, above the totals for 2025 and 2024. ESET Japan President Satoshi Nagano cautioned that incident figures can reflect both worsening threats and better detection or disclosure.

Industry analyst Shoichi Arisawa said additional security spending could be substantial even for companies that already maintain standard measures. The compensation payments, service changes and expected losses therefore point to a broader cost: cyber risk can reach customers, operations, balance sheets and public-sector planning at the same time.

Sources

• Reuters: Japan companies compensate users as cyberattacks buffet economy