Japan PM vows swift response to wave of cyberattacks

Japan will draft an emergency cybersecurity policy package in response to a sudden recent wave of hacking incidents, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Monday.

At an emergency meeting of her cabinet ministers, Takaichi also said Japan will join global efforts to try to identify the attackers.

Dozens of businesses in Japan have reported in recent weeks unauthorised accesses to their systems and potential leaks of client data.


"This has become a serious situation, with growing anxiety over... the misuse of the leaked information, and it is necessary to swiftly step up countermeasures," Takaichi said during the meeting.

"By next week, the government will compile an emergency package of measures," she said.

A Chinese artificial intelligence cybersecurity tool called Artex was used in several recent hacks of Japanese companies, an information security arm of Japanese IT firm GMO Internet Group Inc said last week.

GMO Internet Group itself has come under attack. A hacker demanded the firm to pay $50 million by last Wednesday in connection to a hack, its founder and chief executive officer Masatoshi Kumagai said in a statement dated Sunday.

AI's ability to find previously unknown ways to hack into computer systems is in the global spotlight, as leading labs release ever-more advanced models.

Artex was designed to help organisations enhance their cyber defences through AI-powered security testing to find potential weak points, its developer has said.