Japan's GMO Internet Group is offering up to $1 million under a new "GMO Cybercrime Bounty" programme for information leading to arrests over the breach of its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service, which hosts Windows desktops used for FX trading. GMO refused an extortion demand of about ¥8 billion ($50 million) received on 21 October; attackers took customer information and threatened customers' trading accounts. On 27 October the group published what it says is customer-related data on a website that was shut down (including mirrors) by 4 a.m. on 28 October, and a broker has linked unauthorised trades to logins leaked from the service. The bounty runs until an arrest or 27 October 2027. The incident illustrates both the operational disruption extortion now causes retail-trading platforms and an emerging countermeasure — reward-based attribution — that Australian financial institutions could observe as a precedent.

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