Japan Denies Report of Cyber Attack on Military

Japan Denies Report of Cyber Attack on Military
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Japan’s Defense Ministry denied a report that a military computer network had suffered a high-level cyber attack in September, possibly involving a state actor, according to Bloomberg. A public affairs official at the ministry said the report wasn’t true, and that it receives numerous suspicious e-mails and other forms of contact believed to be cyber attacks on a daily basis.

The official, who declined to be named in line with government policy, also said the ministry doesn’t comment on such attacks as that would expose its ability to deal with them. Kyodo news had cited ministry sources in an earlier report, which said that the hackers didn’t leave a detailed trail and the extent of the damage was unclear. The news agency said the hackers took advantage of the fact that computers at Japan’s National Defense Academy and National Defense Medical College are connected both to a university network and to an internal network linking military bases.

The report also cited senior military officials as saying the attack was viewed as a crisis. Staff at the ministry and the Self-Defense Forces were temporarily banned from connecting to the Internet after the incident became apparent in September, it said. The reported attack came two-and-a-half years after the SDF set up their own cyber defense unit.