UPDATE (7/27/2024):
Since publishing this article, NicoNico has announced that the platform will reopen on August 5, 2024, after a couple of months of downtime. I am very happy that the NicoNico team was able to get things running again! Congratulations! 🙂
Original Article:
Hello everyone! As some of you might know, NicoNico Douga, Japan’s version of YouTube and a home for VOCALOID content for about two decades, was attacked by ransomware on June 8th and has been down since then. We now know from a blog post they made that NicoNico won’t be coming back for at least a month.
“‘Nico Nico’ is a service that works together with more than hundreds of systems. To recover, it is necessary to check the contents of the blocked server one by one, rescue the safe data, and use the rescued data to rebuild the Niconico Douga and Niconico Live System in a safe environment. The exact recovery time depends on the results of the damage survey, but it is expected to take more than a month, and we plan to resume sequentially from services that can be resumed.”
– NicoNico Douga Press Release (Translation of quote provided by Safari/Apple)
As someone who is studying Computer Science and Cybersecurity for their future career, I want to give my perspective on the attack and explain why it is important, mainly to the VOCALOID community (because, you know, I made a whole website about VOCALOID and Hatsune Miku).
I first saw that NicoNico went down when I saw that they made a post on Twitter/X about it:
I was shocked since I didn’t think any groups wanted to attack NicoNico (I didn’t think they were a big target), so I went ahead and followed their Twitter account, and I waited to hear updates as they came in. Over the next few days, they would host some of their live streams on YouTube, and today (in Japan), they would announce what happened. Here is another quote from their press release on what happened:
“At around 3:30 a.m. on June 8, a problem occurred that could not be used normally in all of our web services, including our services “Nico Nico” and “N Preparatory School”, and we investigated that around 8:00 a.m. on the same day, it was caused by a cyber attack including ransomware. It has been confirmed. On the same day, we set up a countermeasures headquarters and immediately cut off communication between servers in the data center provided by group companies and shut down servers to prevent the spread of damage, and suspended the provision of our web services. In addition, it was found that the attack also extended to the internal network, so the use of part of the internal business system was suspended and access to the internal network was prohibited. As of June 14, we are confirming the damage status and formulating recovery procedures with the aim of gradual recovery.”
– NicoNico Douga Press Release (Translation of quote provided by Safari/Apple)
I couldn’t believe it—this was huge! It is unfortunate since the VOCALOID community has a significant presence on NicoNico. Here is a brief history lesson for people not in the loop: NicoNico has been home to VOCALOID content since its launch in 2007, and it is one of the platforms that helped Hatsune Miku rise in popularity. Without NicoNico, Miku most likely wouldn’t be as popular as she is today. Also, famous Miku songs were initially uploaded to the platform, such as World is Mine (by Ryo – supercell), Ievan Polka (Otomania), and even the original version of Nyan Cat (DaniwellP), to name a few. With NicoNico down, a pillar of the VOCALOID community is gone, at least until they can get the service back online. Thankfully, the videos uploaded are safe and were not affected by the attack:
“Niconico Douga’s system, posted video data, and video distribution system were operated on the public cloud, so they were not affected.”
– NicoNico Douga Press Release (Translation of quote provided by Safari/Apple)
Anyway, thank you for reading this post about a service that is unknown here in the West, and I will see you guys later! Bye! 🙂