One of Japan’s biggest digital manga stores is still dark. NTT Solmare says its Comic CMOA e-book service remains suspended after a cyberattack that exposed some members’ personal information, and the company has not set a date to bring it back.
What happened
NTT Solmare shut down the service at 11:35 a.m. Japan time on Thursday, October 15, after it determined that outsiders had very likely gained unauthorized access to its servers. A day later, it confirmed that the system holding member information had been breached and that data had leaked.
The leaked details include email addresses, birth dates, gender, nicknames and hashed passwords, which are stored in a converted form rather than as the original text. NTT Solmare says it is still working out how many members were affected and will contact them once it confirms who was hit.
In its latest update, the company said it has identified how the attackers got in and what methods they used, and is putting measures in place to stop it happening again. It also found that some system log files were viewed and taken, and it is checking whether those logs contain member information.
What is safe, and what to do
NTT Solmare says credit card information is not stored in the affected system and was not leaked. It has not found any leak of purchase histories, and no loss or damage to readers’ My Bookshelf libraries.
The company is asking members who used the same email and password combination elsewhere to change those passwords, and to watch out for phishing emails pretending to be from Comic CMOA. When the store comes back, every member will be asked to reset their password.
When it might return
NTT Solmare says it needs more safety work and coordination with the relevant authorities before reopening, so it cannot give an exact date. When it does return, the plan is to start with web reading of books members have already bought, then bring other features back in stages. Anime News Network has been tracking the updates in English.
The outage is a reminder of how much of a reader’s collection lives on one company’s servers. Digital comics platforms have had a turbulent year, from data security scares to shutdowns like Tapas setting its end of service for March 2027.
