Kodansha BECK, one employee's email account was accessed illegally and 50 suspicious emails were sent to external parties

Kodansha BECK announced on October 2nd that one of its employees' email account had been illegally accessed by a third party, resulting in 50 suspicious emails being sent to external parties.

There is also evidence that a third party has obtained email data, and there is a possibility that personal information stored in the account may have been leaked. We suspect that the cause is that a third party illegally obtained the account ID and password through some method.

Kodansha BECK was launched in December 2025 through the merger of Kodansha BC and Kodansha Editorial Co., Ltd. The account in question was used by the former Kodansha BC, and there was no unauthorized access to the account currently used by Kodansha BECK.

Around 10:47 a.m. on September 14th, a suspicious email was sent from the target account to an external party. The company suspended and deleted the account immediately after discovering the incident, and completely blocked it the same day.

After examining the access logs received from the email service provider, it was discovered that there had been continuous unauthorized access from outside, and that a third party may have obtained the information in the mailbox.

Due to the large number of emails stored in mailboxes, it would be difficult to identify the full scope of the information that may have been leaked, as well as all the affected individuals, and contact them individually, so this announcement is intended to serve as an apology and report to those involved.

At this time, we have not confirmed any secondary damage such as unauthorized use of information or financial damage, but we urge caution as it is possible that potentially leaked information may be misused to send spoofed or phishing emails pretending to be from the company or its employees.