Japan has been hit by a wave of cyberattacks. More than 20 major companies have reported breaches in recent weeks, with tens of millions of customer records at risk. The situation has become so serious that the government has called an emergency meeting and banks are being advised to change their identity verification rules.
Japan has been hit by a wave of cyberattacks. More than 20 major companies have reported breaches in recent weeks, with tens of millions of customer records at risk. The situation has become so serious that the government has called an emergency meeting and banks are being advised to change their identity verification rules.
This is reported by the Financial Times.
Railways, shops, karaoke chains, hospitals and even the police have been hit, prompting the ruling party's cybersecurity chief, Masaaki Taira, to declare Japan in a state of "cyberspace emergency."
One of the most high-profile cases is the hacking of the car rental service Times Car. The attackers were able to steal photos of customers’ driving licenses. Because of this , the Financial Services Agency of Japan urged banks to stop accepting regular driving licenses for opening accounts as soon as possible. Moreover, such data can be very cheap. According to expert estimates cited by the FT, images of driving licenses can be sold on the darknet for as little as 25 yen — about $0.15 apiece.
Experts have warned for years that Japan has a cybersecurity problem, with companies slow to update their systems and existing security measures not always keeping up with modern threats. Artificial intelligence could also be making the situation worse. According to a representative of cybersecurity company Blackpanda, attackers used to spend a lot of time searching for vulnerabilities in systems, but now AI can do some of that work. However, there is no evidence that AI was used in the latest wave of attacks on Japan.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that hackers massively attacked Hikvision surveillance cameras in Ukraine.
