UPDATED 14:10 EDT / OCTOBER 26 2011

NEWS

China Takes the Heat for Latest Japanese Government, Defense Cyberattacks

Recently an unusually large number of hacking incidents were unrecovered by seemingly bigger and bigger targets: companies, defense contractors, and now the Japanese government. This time however the attack has been traced back to a server in China, the country that is supposedly involved in a few of the other high-profile attacks we’ve been hearing about according to some speculation.

The Telegraph picked up a story by the Asahi Shimbun, which reports a security breach in the Japanese parliament which dates back to June, and was only investigated by authorities near the end of August. What makes the story even more interesting is that it shares several similarities with at least a couple of other incidents.

The publication said a spear-phishing attack directed at one of the members managed to get a Trojan into the parliament’s network.

“The cyberattack began when a lower house politician opened an attachment to an email in late July, the newspaper said, adding that the unnamed lawmaker did not report the suspected virus infection until late August.”

The email was sent from a China-based server, though there’s a possibility it has been controlled from another country according to chief cabinet secretary and a lower house member Osamu Fujimara.

This news follows a Monday report by the Asahi revealing some additional details about a breach discovered by Japanese defense contractor Mitsubishi Heavy as early as August. 80 computers at one of the company’s facilities were discovered at one time, and it turns out hackers managed to obtain sensitive nuclear power plant and fighter jet planes.

China now became the target of rumors churning out of the blogosphere, socially now after RSA said it was a “nation state” that stole data about its SecurID authentication system. That in turn is believed to have led a wide-scale attack on U.S defense contractors.


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