Submission statement: The LDP has declared that Japan is in a state of emergency in cyberspace. In the past few weeks, several Japanese businesses, including major companies (like SoftBank-owned cloud service operator IDC Frontier), local governments, police, railways, and even university servers have been targeted in potentially AI-assisted ransomware attacks and consumer data leaks. Virtually every industry has been affected. And Japan is not alone in this, South Korea was also affected. This concerns both the importance of cybersecurity in business and the threats posed by the expansion of AI.
>A wave of cyberattacks has wreaked havoc in Japan over the past few weeks, leaving virtually no industry untouched and the government searching for answers about how to bolster its defenses.
>The hackers have tampered with servers, taken local government websites offline and gained access to large tranches of consumer data. Masaaki Taira, Japan’s former digital minister who leads a cybersecurity committee within **the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, declared on Friday that Japan was in “a state of emergency in cyberspace.”**
>Experts said that the attackers were most likely motivated by money. After paralyzing operations, they could attempt to extort local governments and companies into paying large ransoms, or sell the stolen information.
>“Their actions may result in the suspension or degradation of systems and services that are important to society,” said Katsunari Yoshioka, a professor at Yokohama National University and an expert in systems security.
>**A study by TrendAI, a cybersecurity software company, found 600 cyberattacks were reported in Japan in the first nine months of 2026, more than the total number in 2025.**
>In the past two weeks, a public university had to cancel classes for a week after its servers were attacked. A car-sharing service said that more than one million personal documents had been leaked, including headshots on driver’s licenses and home addresses. A ransomware attack on a cloud service operator owned by SoftBank affected almost 500 companies and local governments, including a rail operator and a police headquarters.
>**Ransomware attacks have caused major problems in recent years well before A.I., but experts said artificial intelligence may have made these attacks easier.**
>Toshiharu Furukawa, Japan’s minister of digital transformation, said at a news conference on Friday in Tokyo that the cyberattacks were reaching “across all sectors.”
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Submission statement: The LDP has declared that Japan is in a state of emergency in cyberspace. In the past few weeks, several Japanese businesses, including major companies (like SoftBank-owned cloud service operator IDC Frontier), local governments, police, railways, and even university servers have been targeted in potentially AI-assisted ransomware attacks and consumer data leaks. Virtually every industry has been affected. And Japan is not alone in this, South Korea was also affected. This concerns both the importance of cybersecurity in business and the threats posed by the expansion of AI.
>A wave of cyberattacks has wreaked havoc in Japan over the past few weeks, leaving virtually no industry untouched and the government searching for answers about how to bolster its defenses.
>The hackers have tampered with servers, taken local government websites offline and gained access to large tranches of consumer data. Masaaki Taira, Japan’s former digital minister who leads a cybersecurity committee within **the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, declared on Friday that Japan was in “a state of emergency in cyberspace.”**
>Experts said that the attackers were most likely motivated by money. After paralyzing operations, they could attempt to extort local governments and companies into paying large ransoms, or sell the stolen information.
>“Their actions may result in the suspension or degradation of systems and services that are important to society,” said Katsunari Yoshioka, a professor at Yokohama National University and an expert in systems security.
>**A study by TrendAI, a cybersecurity software company, found 600 cyberattacks were reported in Japan in the first nine months of 2026, more than the total number in 2025.**
>In the past two weeks, a public university had to cancel classes for a week after its servers were attacked. A car-sharing service said that more than one million personal documents had been leaked, including headshots on driver’s licenses and home addresses. A ransomware attack on a cloud service operator owned by SoftBank affected almost 500 companies and local governments, including a rail operator and a police headquarters.
>**Ransomware attacks have caused major problems in recent years well before A.I., but experts said artificial intelligence may have made these attacks easier.**
>Toshiharu Furukawa, Japan’s minister of digital transformation, said at a news conference on Friday in Tokyo that the cyberattacks were reaching “across all sectors.”
I think one of my comments with the article text was removed. So, here’s the [archive link](https://archive.ph/20261013210739/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/world/asia/japan-cyberattack-artificial-intelligence.html).
I wonder if the ransomware industry is having its own vibe coder vs old school coder moment.
Damn they got the fax machine /s
AI is totally making hacking easier, that’s not a question at this point.