The official website of Toei Animation announced the results on Thursday, Apr 28, 2022, of the investigation carried out regarding a ransomware virus attack due to third-party intrusion in early March.

According to Toei, a company employee downloaded a business-critical software from an external website that had been modified to simultaneously download a ransomware entry point. The unauthorized access was detected not before Mar 6.

Following this, Toei was able to establish the virus’s existence and shut down its internal systems in order to explore the virus’s range.

However, after being infected by the ransomware virus, some of the data on the Company’s server and PCs were encrypted, resulting in a month of delays in parts of the regular operations and animation production.

More importantly, the report by external security experts found no evidence of any information leaking, including personal data. In addition, no report on consumer damages has been received by the company.

As a preventive measure for future mishaps, the company intends to educate its staff on information security, as well as tighten its response system to prevent illegal access.

Toei Animation resumed broadcasting the episodes of the four anime series namely Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai, Digimon Ghost Game, One Piece and Delicious Party Pretty Cure, whose schedules were affected from April 16, 2022.

After the reschedule, the official website of Dragon Ball and Toei announced in April that the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has set a new premiere date for June 11.

Toei Animation Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio primarily controlled by its namesake Toei Company. It has produced numerous series, including Sally the Witch, GeGeGe no Kitarō (2018), Mazinger Z, Galaxy Express 999, Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon, Slam Dunk, Digimon, One Piece, Toriko, The Transformers (between 1984–1990, including several Japanese exclusive productions) and the Precure series.

Source: Toei Press Release