Japan’s Pension System Hacked; 1.25 Million Identification Numbers, Birth Dates, Addresses Compromised

There’s been quite a bit of talk recently about ‘cyberthreats’ to the US. Back in April, Defense Secretary Ash Carter unveiled a new US strategy designed to combat a list of supposed ‘cyberadversaries’ which include (of course) China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The Pentagon suggested that Washington may use ‘offensive’ cyberattacks if necessary to ‘disrupt an adversary’s military related networks or infrastructure so that the U. S. military can protect U. S. interests in an area of operations.’
As it turns out, the US did just that five years ago when Homeland Security tried to deploy a computer virus against North Korea’s nuclear program, an effort which ultimately failed due to, as Reuters puts it, ‘the extreme isolation of [Pyongyang’s] communications systems.’
More recently, the US implicated Chinese hacker spies in a scheme purportedly designed to steal US military secrets from Penn State’s engineering department and “Russain crime syndicates” were blamedfor an IRS breach.
As far as Washington’s allies are concerned, Japan is onboard with PM Shinzo Abe and President Obama striking a cybersecurity alliance when Abe visited the capital in April. In a speech to Congress, Abe had the following to say about Chinese hacking: ‘[We cannot] simply allow free riders on intellectual property.’
In the latest cyber drama, we learned on Sunday that Japan Pension Service staff computers were hacked and 1.25 million cases of personal data were compromised in the process. Reuters has the story:

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 06/01/2015.