Karaoke hack shows cybercrime is routine
The head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's cybersecurity body went so far as to describe it as a "state of emergency in cyberspace."
A series of cyberattacks targeting major Japanese companies has raised concerns about the country's cybersecurity. While the attacks are not due to cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques, their scale is alarming. The head of Japan's ruling party's cybersecurity team even called it a "state of emergency in cyberspace."
Notable victims include brokerage firm Daiwa Securities Group, SoftBank's cloud subsidiary IDC Frontier, railway operator JR East, convenience-store chain Lawson, car-rental platform Times, as well as a major karaoke and grilled meats restaurant chain. Publicly disclosed breaches, mostly affecting customer data, have surpassed the total from all of 2025, according to cybersecurity firm Trend Micro.
Interestingly, while global ransomware attacks dropped by 3% between July 2025 and June 2026, as reported in Microsoft's Digital Defense Report, they increased by 67% in Japan. This surge is likely just the beginning, as the extent of these attacks remains largely unknown.
Written by urgent.news from Japan Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
