Nikkei says hackers took 1.83 million records from a development cloud service

Japanese media group Nikkei Inc., owner of The Nikkei and the Financial Times, has disclosed a data breach involving 1.83 million records. The company says attackers used previously compromised credentials early on October 7 to access a cloud service it uses for system development. Most of the stolen records, about 1.68 million, contained no information that could identify an individual. About 150,000 records included at least one of the following: full names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth. Another 120,000 contained email addresses. Nikkei says no credit card information was exposed. The company revoked the abused credentials after discovering the intrusion and notified Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission on October 11. It says it is still investigating the scope of the incident and the nature of the data, and that as of October 16 it had found no evidence that the stolen personal information had been misused. Nikkei says it will add security measures if needed. BleepingComputer reports this is the third data breach Nikkei has disclosed in about a month. Affected readers and customers could face targeted phishing using the exposed contact details.