Nikkei discloses breaches of employees’ Microsoft, Google email accounts

Nikkei has disclosed that unknown attackers broke into two employee email accounts, one on Google Workspace and one on Microsoft 365, and used the second to send thousands of phishing messages. The Japanese publishing giant described the incidents in a statement issued Sunday. The company said the affected data does not include information about readers or interviewees.

According to Nikkei, an employee's Google Workspace account was accessed in late July, exposing personal information belonging to employees and business partners. The company learned of the breach in early August after a notification from Google and changed the account password at that point. The incident may have exposed the names and email addresses of 1,646 people.

The more recent intrusion involved an employee's Microsoft 365 account, which threat actors accessed in September. Nikkei said the account was then used to send 9,000 phishing emails aimed at company staff and interviewees. The messages went out on September 30 and contained links to malicious websites, reaching internal staff and interviewees with whom several employees had been in contact.

Nikkei said it has changed its passwords and that no unauthorized logins have been confirmed since the account changes. The company has contacted the recipients individually and asked them to delete the emails. It also warned affected individuals to watch for suspicious messages that may impersonate Nikkei or its subsidiaries in new phishing attempts.

Nikkei has not attributed the attacks to a specific threat actor or hacking group, and it has not said whether the two incidents are connected. The disclosures add to a series of security incidents the company has reported in recent years, including a breach of its Slack messaging platform last year that affected more than 17,000 employees and business partners.

In May 2022, Nikkei's Singapore subsidiary was hit by a ransomware attack that affected a server likely containing customer data. In late September 2019, the company lost approximately $29 million in a business email compromise attack that targeted a Nikkei America employee. Nikkei owns the Financial Times and The Nikkei, the world's largest financial newspaper, and is one of the world's largest media corporations.

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