The Japanese movie company Toei Animation faced a brutal cyber attack on their servers in March 2022 that caused many of their projects to be delayed. ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ had its theatrical release delayed while episodes of ‘One Piece’ ‘Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai,’ ‘Delicious Party Precure,’ and ‘Digimon Ghost Game’ were forced to have their broadcasts briefly canceled following the hack.
Crunchyroll is now reporting that the NHK has revealed that the company was targeted by ransomware from hackers who were seeking to make a profit.
They explained that “the hack on Toei Animation was a ransomware virus that demanded a pay-off. Toei was able to confirm the existence of the virus and shut down its internal systems to investigate the extent of the virus’ reach. Details on the ransom, the virus itself, or where the virus may have come from, were not revealed.”
“The Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT) revealed that these types of cyberattacks had become more common against Japanese companies during the pandemic, jumping from 20,000 reports in 2019 to 35,000 in the first 9 months of 2021. In February 2022, Toyota and its supply chain companies were targeted by a similar hack causing production to halt, with March seeing three other high-profile companies attacked,” they continued. “All anime production is currently still slowed down due to internal systems not being fully operational.”
While new episodes of the anime are restarting production, ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ is still in limbo with no firm release date being offered.
“The extent of the situation is still under investigation, and efforts are underway to normalize the operations. We deeply apologize to our fans for any concern this may cause,” Toei Animation said in a statement.
Most of the shows will begin airing new episodes in the middle of April 2022 while other projects will continue to see delays.
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