Cybersecurity
Nikkei discloses breaches of Google and Microsoft email accounts
Nikkei said attackers accessed one employee’s Google Workspace account in July and another employee’s Microsoft 365 account in September, exposed personal data, and sent phishing emails to staff and interviewees.
- Nikkei said an employee’s Google Workspace account was accessed in late July and that personal information belonging to employees and business partners was exposed.
- The company said it learned of that intrusion in early August after a notification from Google and then changed the account password.
- Nikkei said the exposed material may have included the names and email addresses of 1,646 people, but not reader or interviewee data.
- The company said attackers later accessed another employee’s Microsoft 365 account in September and used it to send 9,000 phishing emails aimed at Nikkei staff and interviewees.
- Nikkei said it had changed passwords, had not confirmed further unauthorised logins, and had not identified who was behind the incidents or whether they were linked.
Nikkei said an employee’s Google Workspace account was accessed in late July and that personal information on employees and business partners may have been exposed. It learned of the issue in early August after Google alerted it and then changed the password.
The company said the material could have included the names and email addresses of 1,646 people. It said the affected data did not include information about readers or interviewees.
Nikkei said a separate employee’s Microsoft 365 account was accessed in September and used to send 9,000 phishing emails to staff and interviewees. On 30 September, messages containing links to malicious sites were sent to internal staff and to interviewees who had been in contact with employees.
The company said it changed passwords and had not confirmed any further unauthorised sign-ins since then. It contacted recipients individually and asked them to delete the emails.
Nikkei said it had not attributed the attacks to a specific threat actor and had not said whether the two incidents were connected. The article also noted earlier disclosures involving Slack, a ransomware attack on Nikkei’s Singapore subsidiary in 2022, and a business email compromise in 2019.
Named in this story
Companies
- Nikkei
- disclosed the email account breaches and phishing emails
- notified Nikkei about the first account compromise
Products and systems
- Google Workspace
- the service whose employee account was accessed in July
- Microsoft 365
- the service whose employee account was later accessed and abused
How the source tells it
The article was largely matter-of-fact, with only a brief note of urgency in Nikkei’s warning to recipients about suspicious emails.
No emotive framing was found in the original.