Cybercrime organisation Qilin has reportedly claimed it was the source of the breach that has hit Asahi Group Holdings' domestic operations in the last week.
According to Reuters, the Russian-speaking hackers known as Qilin claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack and said they stole around 27 gigabytes of data from the Japanese food and drinks giant.
The hacking group reportedly posted 29 images to its website that it claims to be internal Asahi Group Holdings documents. However, the authenticity of those files has not yet been confirmed.
Asahi Group Holdings announced a “systems failure” due to a cyberattack on its domestic business last week, affecting order-taking, production and distribution.
On Friday, the company said the breach involved ransomware and could have led to data being stolen.
Just Food asked Asahi to confirm Qilin was the group responsible. A spokesperson said: “As the matter is currently under investigation, we would like to refrain from commenting, including on the specific name of group claiming responsibility.”
In a separate new statement about the cyberattack today (8 October), the Super Dry brewer said "investigations have confirmed that data suspected to have been subject to unauthorised transfer as a result of the recent attack has been identified on the internet".
It added: "We are conducting investigation to determine the nature and scope of the information that may have been subject to unauthorised transfer. Should the investigation confirm any impact from unauthorised data transfer, notifications will be delivered promptly. This incident has impacted our technology assets in Japan. While investigation is ongoing, there is no indication that other data and systems were affected."
Asahi Group Holdings confirmed it has resumed production at all six of its domestic breweries. The company said it has restarted "partial shipments" of Super Dry and would resume shipments of Asahi Draft Beer and Asahi Dry Zero from 15 October.
Meanwhile, the group has "partially resumed" production at six of its seven domestic soft-drinks factories. The seventh will restart output from tomorrow.
All of Asahi Group Holdings' seven food factories have "partially resumed" production, it added.
However, the spokesperson added: “Production has partially resumed to match the volume of orders and shipments being handled manually, but full-scale operations have not yet restarted. As of October 9, all factories (approximately 30) will partially resume operations.”
