Japan has specifically denied media reports which claimed that the nation’s Military Computer Network came under high-level cyber attack in September this year. The East Asia’s island country has also denied reports the cyber attack was taken up by a state actor.
The official who chooses to remain anonymous due to government policy has said that the ministry is not interested in commenting on such attacks as that would expose its inability to deal with such situations.
Kyodo news was the first news agency to report on the cyber attack on Japan’s National Defense Academy which also downed the network of National Defense Medical College as both were interconnected. It is confirmed that the shared network system was used as an access point to connect to the Defense Ministry’s internal network.
What’s amusing is that the cyber attack came 2 years after the Self-Defense Forces was set up as a cyber defense unit.
Japan is yet to adopt the penetration test model of computing into its defense infrastructure. In this model, the nation adopts smart attack models to test their cyber security defense structure either through their own security teams or third parties.
After detecting the intrusion, the staff at the ministry and the self-defense forces was temporarily banned from accessing the internet in September this year.
But Kyodo news source says that the news that the hack was conducted by a state-sponsored actor is true and proof of details are existing with its news correspondent. It also added that the hack has exposed some vital details about the nation’s defense which when could bring the entire nation’s critical structure on knees if exploited.
However, Japan’s defense ministry has denied this news and said that it will conduct a serious investigation and will then let the press know further details.
