Japan Becomes A Target to Massive Cyber Attack, Days After US Vows to Protect The Country

On Saturday US agreed to protect Japan from cyber attacks by placing the island nation under US cyber security umbrella. It was thought that this move would be a big cyber security booster and reduce cyber attacks from China and North Korea.  Japan has only 90 members in its military cyber defense, a number dwarfed by the Pentagon’s 6,000.

However two days later after the announcement of partnership it was reported, that the national pensions system of Japan was hacked, leaking 1.25 million cases of personal data. Officials have reported that core computer system, keeping financial details, was not connected with hacked computers, thus hoping that sensitive financial information was not breached.

According to Japan times people’s pension IDs, names, addresses and birth dates have been stolen through illicit accesses to fund workers’ personal computers. It is believed that an employee opened a malicious email triggering a massive data breach. This cyber attack emphasized that $1.1 Trillion Japan Pension Service also requires protection like other military or ciritcal infrastructure

This attack was quite similar to IRS hack which happened days before massive data breach in Japan.