Ransomware attack on IDC Frontier takes down manga stores
Comic Cmoa, Booklive and Renta! are offline after a ransomware attack on the SoftBank-owned cloud provider, with purchased titles also inaccessible.
A ransomware attack on Japanese cloud provider IDC Frontier, owned by SoftBank, has taken down several digital manga storefronts, including Comic Cmoa, Booklive and Renta!, according to animeuknews.net. The attack affected hundreds of companies.
Renta! is in maintenance mode with no estimated time for returning to normal usage. Comic Cmoa is down with no estimated return date, though the service says it is working to restore access to purchased products. Booklive was also down for a period of time.
The disruption extends beyond browsing: titles already downloaded through the affected stores' apps are not accessible either.
Animate restricted overseas access after several days of downtime in Japan, and some digital bookshops went entirely offline while investigating the attack.
Context
Digital purchases accounted for a 76.1% share of the Japanese manga market, a figure that underlines how much readers rely on these storefronts. The outage follows other disruptions to digital manga access: Manga-Planet/Futekiya closed, taking with it exclusive series that users had paid to access with coins, and Kakao Entertainment is closing webtoon platform Tapas.
Quick answers
Which digital manga stores are affected by the IDC Frontier ransomware attack?
Comic Cmoa, Booklive and Renta! are among the storefronts taken down. Renta! is in maintenance mode with no estimated return time, and Comic Cmoa is down with no estimated return date.
Can users still read manga they already bought?
Books downloaded through the affected stores' apps are not accessible either, according to the report.
Who owns IDC Frontier?
IDC Frontier is a Japanese cloud provider owned by SoftBank.