Cyberattacks and leaks of personal information have surged this year, as companies and the National Police Agency struggle to keep pace technologically to thwart such breaches.<\/p>\n
The perpetrators have attacked a variety of industry sectors, not just customer-service companies.<\/p>\n
Yusuke Nakajima, a cybersecurity specialist at NTT DATA Group Corp., suspects the use of artificial intelligence is behind the sharp rise in unauthorized access attempts and attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the beginning of this year, highly capable artificial intelligence that can be exploited for malicious purposes has become available at a low cost,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Max Holdings Ltd., the Fukuoka-based operator of the MrMax discount store chain, said Oct. 6 that personal information of up to 1.73 million customers registered through its app and other services had been leaked.<\/p>\n
Monogatari Corp., based in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, operates Korean barbecue restaurant chain Yakiniku King. It said Oct. 5 that personal information of about 10.78 million registered members was leaked following a cyberattack on its app.<\/p>\n
Pharmaceutical company Asahi Kasei Therapeutics Corp., a subsidiary of chemical giant Asahi Kasei Corp., said Oct. 6 that personal information of about 510,000 individuals working in the medical field, including their names, the medical institutions they belong to and their positions, may have been leaked.<\/p>\n
In some cases, the intent of the attacks has clearly been malicious.<\/p>\n
At GMO Research & AI Inc., an online survey company under GMO Internet Group Inc., up to 950,000 pieces of personal information were leaked, and members\u2019 reward points were confirmed to have been exchanged fraudulently.<\/p>\n
As of Oct. 5, authorities had identified 611 such cases, resulting in losses totaling 2.8695 million yen ($18,000).<\/p>\n
RISING ACCESS ATTEMPTS<\/p>\n
The number of suspicious access attempts targeting single IP addresses reached 13,687 per day during the first half of this year, according to the NPA. Such attempts are regarded as preparations for a cyberattack.<\/p>\n
The figure was up 50 percent from the same period in 2025, when a then-record 9,606 access attempts were recorded daily, or roughly one every nine seconds.<\/p>\n
The number of daily access attempts has been increasing year by year, standing in the 7,000 range in 2021 and 2022, and moving into the 9,000 range in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n
PREVENTIVE MEASURES<\/p>\n
Toshiharu Furukawa, the digital minister, called for the entire nation to take preventive measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not just a problem for companies and organizations,\u201d he said at a news conference Oct. 6. \u201cPreventive measures taken by each individual can also help stop such damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furukawa cited three measures that individuals should take: avoid reusing passwords; use multi-factor authentication; and be wary of suspicious emails and messages on social media.<\/p>\n
Takumi Kimura, a cybersecurity consultant at NRI SecureTechnologies Ltd., said no evidence has been found to confirm that AI was actually used in the recent series of unauthorized access and information leaks.<\/p>\n
But he said that foreign AI-dedicated institutions have released AI models that anyone can use on their computer, and some of these models are highly capable of being exploited for malicious cyberattacks.<\/p>\n
Kimura said it is possible that attackers have used such AI models to explore and gather information as a preparatory phase before carrying out the actual attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat those on the defensive side should do to prepare for such attacks remains fundamentally unchanged,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
Kimura said it is important for companies to once again check whether they have addressed vulnerabilities that are already publicly known, understand how many systems and services they are responsible for protecting, and ensure that each of them is being managed properly.<\/p>\n
(This article was written by Shogo Mitsuzumi, Eisuke Eguchi and Ryo Sanada.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cyberattacks and leaks of personal information have surged this year, as companies and the National Police Agency struggle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8768,4,450,451,3471,8767,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-873817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-asahi-shimbun","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-japan","tag-national-report","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}