SecurityNov 13, 2026, 11:45 AM UTC·2 min read

Onamae.com Desktop Cloud hack: GMO faces $200M-plus in claims

Traders have filed claims for about 3 billion yen in FX losses after the Onamae.com Desktop Cloud breach. GMO Internet's chief is taking a pay cut.

A server room with rows of racks, illustrating a cloud hosting breach at a Japanese internet company. — Image: ITmedia NEWS

Hackers made trading accounts lose money on purpose, and now the bill is arriving. After the breach of Onamae.com Desktop Cloud, customers had filed compensation claims for 2,943 FX accounts by November 12, totalling about 2.998 billion yen.

GMO Internet President Masaaki Ito apologised again at the company's earnings briefing on November 13. He said the firm takes the incident "extremely seriously" as a custodian of customers' data. He and two other executives will take pay cuts for three months from the December payout: 25% for Ito, 20% each for Hiroshi Yamashita (system division) and Kimihiro Kodama (domain and cloud business). Ito said this reflects the current assessment, and responsibility will be reviewed once the investigation is done.

What is Onamae.com Desktop Cloud?

It is a virtual private server (VPS) service, widely used to run automated FX trading tools. The breach was found on October 20, and all plans were suspended. The next day the attacker demanded about 8 billion yen in ransom and manipulated customers' FX accounts to trade at a deliberate loss. GMO has said from the start that it will not pay. On October 27 the attacker published one customer's data, and no further leaks have been confirmed.

What will it cost GMO Internet?

Beyond covering trading losses, GMO plans a flat 5,000 yen goodwill payment to every customer. So far 10,976 requests worth 54.88 million yen are in, with up to 133 million yen expected. Claims are open until November 30. A customer whose data was published gets up to 3 million yen; one case qualifies so far.

Direct costs are put at 3.05 billion yen, booked in the October to December quarter. Cyber insurance is capped at 1.1 billion yen, about a third of that, and whether it applies is still undecided. The suspension should also cut sales and profit by roughly 300 million yen per quarter, and the investigation will cost at least 60 million yen.

Because the total is not fixed, GMO has not changed its full-year forecast or its 21.51 yen dividend forecast. Through September, sales rose 7.3% to 62.5 billion yen and operating profit rose 32.6% to 7.46 billion yen. Analysis of the cause and prevention measures will follow later.

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Tags:gmo internetonamae.comdesktop clouddata breachfx tradingvps