Online casino promoters briefly seized control of the website of the Japanese electronics retailer Ibiden this week, say Japanese media outlets.
Ibiden, which sells electronics and ceramics, is based in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture.
The Japanese broadcaster Tokai TV reported that the firm’s website was “displaying pages from what appeared to be an overseas-based online casino site” for several hours on the evening of April 13.
Ibiden officials did not comment on the nature of the online casino-related content displayed. But the firm admitted it had suffered an “outage” in a statement published on its website on April 14. It added: “We sincerely apologize for the great concern caused to our customers and all parties involved.”
The website’s server was “subjected to unauthorized access from an external source,” said the firm. Ibiden is reportedly considering filing a police report.
A range of website functions remained unavailable on April 15.
Online Casino: Japanese Electronics Retailer Suffers ‘Outage’
“We are continuing our investigation and recovery efforts. We want to identify the source of the unauthorized access,” the firm said in its statement. “Efforts continue to determine the cause of the outage, strengthen security measures, and implement permanent solutions to this matter.”
Ibiden said no personal information had been compromised during the alleged hack, although it admitted that its website had briefly “displayed malicious web pages.”
“However, considering the potential risks of unauthorized access, we ask our customers to ensure the security systems on their devices are up to date,” Ibiden said.
“We will provide further updates once our maintenance work is complete and will promptly disclose any matters that need to be disclosed in the near future,” the firm added.
The alleged online casino takeover comes after online casino promoters seized control of several anime-related websites.
The anime website takeovers all follow a common pattern. Online casino promoters wait for older anime titles’ website domain registrations to expire.
They then buy the domains and clone content from the original site. But, among the innocuous-looking anime content, they also add links to online casinos.
Online casino promoters have repeated these attacks outside Japan as well. Earlier this year, a fake online casino posing as a permit-holding Russian bookmaker took over the former website of the city of Yakutsk.
Also this year, online casino promoters took over the former website of the Kyrgyzstan’s state-owned trading company.
