Anime giant Toei suffered a weekend cyberattack causing delays in airing new episodes of popular anime series, including ONE PIECE and Delicious Party Precure.
This news has been highly disappointing for the fans of the highly-acclaimed Japanese manga ONE PIECE, who eagerly anticipate the release of the series’ chapter 1000.
According to the announcement by both Toei and ONE PIECE, the anime studio detected unauthorized access to their systems on Mach 6th, 2022.
The next day, the company issued a notice stating they had to shut down all internal systems as a safety precaution and launched an investigation into the incident.
The investigation would also determine if the threat actors stole data during the attack, leading to a potential data breach affecting customers and business partners.
“We are currently investigating the details, but we are also conducting an investigation by an external specialized institution to confirm whether information about customers and business partners and personal information are included,” announced Toei in a press statement.
Toei says they are working with an external cybersecurity firm to help them conduct the investigation and have informed law enforcement.
New Anime episodes delayed
Today, Toei Animation published an update on the situation, informing their fanbase that the production of new episodes has been delayed due to the shutdown of internal systems while they recover from the attack.
Due to this, the airing of new episodes for “Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken,” “Delicious Party Precure,” “Digimon Ghost Game,” and “ONE PIECE” will be delayed until further notice.
Toei Animation is a historic Japanese studio operating since 1948, having produced hit series such as Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, The Transformers, Digimon, and Mazinger Z.
A delay in producing new episodes of ONE PIECE affects an entire chain of broadcasters worldwide, including Netflix, Funimation, and Crunchyroll.
In Japan, ONE PIECE has consistently been among the top five anime shows in viewership, seeing 2 million demand expressions per month in 2016. This number has likely increased significantly over the past five years.
The side effects of the attack on Toei Animation and the apparent difficulty in restoring the internal systems carry the signs of a ransomware attack, but at this time, BleepingComputer has not been able to confirm this.
Bleeping Computer has sent a request for additional information to Toei Animation, and we will update this post as soon as we hear back from them.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com