Tokyo [Japan], October 26: Japanese industry minister Ryosei Akazawa said Friday that his ministry will launch a team of cybersecurity experts, specialized in ethical hacking, to counter recent waves of unauthorized access and data leaks. The team will be created inside the Innovation Platform Agency affiliated with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry next month.
Some Japanese ministry web pages and corporate services have been partially suspended as a preventive measure following the detection of vulnerabilities in the widely used PHP programming language. Explaining the role of ethical hackers, Akazawa told a press conference that there is a systematic weakness in the country's cyber defense against aggressors.
"(The team) will find security vulnerabilities of the systems" in the hope of further strengthening the security of the whole industry, he said.The ministry has raised awareness of cybersecurity through some 1,000 industry organizations and associations in the face of the PHP problem, according to the minister.
Also on Friday, disaster information services firm Arcadia Inc disclosed that about 1.42 million suspicious emails have been sent from its system as the result of cyberattacks.
"It is deeply regrettable that the trust and social responsibility of the company were damaged," said Arcadia President Seiichi Tenpaku at a press conference in Tokyo.The Osaka Prefecture-based company, which distributes disaster information on behalf of local governments, suspended its services on Oct. 13 after detecting unauthorized access to its computer system.
Its server operation resumed two days later, but up to 3.13 million email addresses may have leaked, according to the company.
Source: Qatar Tribune