- Nichirei Co confirms that a cyberattack affected refrigerated warehouses and frozen food logistics, affecting customers such as KFC Japan
- KFC warned of delivery delays that could lead to menu restrictions, reduced hours or temporary suspension of online ordering
- No data leaks or attacker claims have emerged; The outages suggest ransomware, but both companies expect operations to return to normal by the weekend.
Nichirei Co, a large Japanese company that produces frozen and processed foods, and operates cold chain logistics to distribute them throughout the country, confirmed that it suffered a cyber attack that affected some of its customers, including KFC.
The company confirmed the news in a notice that said: “Today, Nichirei Co experienced a system failure caused by unauthorized access.”
Nichirei said it is currently investigating the incident, but there is no evidence that personal or customer data was leaked outside the company. However, due to the nature of the incident (which has not been explained in detail), multiple operations have been affected, including refrigerated warehouse inbound and outbound operations and frozen food shipping services.
No complaints yet
These disruptions affected, among others, KFC, one of the largest fast food chains in the world. In a separate announcement, KFC said a system outage at Nichirei Logistics Group, which occurred on July 13, affected the company’s logistics and delivery sites. “Starting Tuesday, July 14, 2026, food delivery to KFC stores is expected to be affected,” he said.
“As a result, each store may suspend operations depending on the lack of stock of some products, menu restrictions, reduced business hours or availability of ingredient stocks. In addition, online ordering from the official app and website has also been temporarily suspended.”
The nature of the attack and the identity of the attackers were not revealed. Since Nichirei had to shut down some of its services, it could mean that this was a ransomware attack and that some company data was stolen after all. The Register reports that KFC Japan has not released information about store closures and continues to promote summer menu items.
As of press time, no threat actors have claimed responsibility for the attacks and no Nichirei/KFC data has appeared on the dark web. The companies hope to resume normal operations by the end of the week.
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