Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd said yesterday its computers had been hacked into, with one newspaper saying the target was Japan’s biggest defense contractor’s factories for submarines, missiles and nuclear power plant components.
The company said in a statement that some information could have been stolen in the first known cyber attack on Japan’s defense industry.
“We’ve found out that some system information such as IP addresses have been leaked and that’s creepy enough,” a Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman said.
“We can’t rule out small possibilities of further information leakage, but so far crucial data about our products or technologies have been kept safe,” he said, adding the company first noticed the cyberattack on Aug. 11.
A Japanese defense white paper released last month urged vigilance against cyber attacks after a spate of high-profile online assaults this year that included Lockheed Martin and other US defense contractors.
There were suggestions at the time that those attacks had originated in China.
The Yomiuri Shimbun said about 80 virus-infected computers were found at the company’s Tokyo headquarters as well as manufacturing and research and development sites, including Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works, Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works and Nagoya Guidance & Propulsion System Works.
Kobe Shipyard builds submarines and makes components to build nuclear power stations, while the Nagasaki Shipyard makes escort ships. The Nagoya plant makes guided missiles and rocket engines, the paper said citing unnamed sources.
At least eight different kinds of computer virus including a Trojan horse, which steals key information from infected computer hardware, were found at Mitsubishi Heavy’s main office or production sites, the Yomiuri said.
The company is the country’s biggest defense contractor, winning 215 deals worth ￥260 billion (US$3.4 billion) from Japan’s Ministry of Defense in the year to last March, or nearly a quarter of the ministry’s spending that year.
Weapons included surface-to-air Patriot missiles and AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles.
Mitsubishi Heavy has also been working closely with Boeing, making wings for its 787 Dreamliner jets.
“It’s probably just the first time that hacking attacks in Japan have been detected. It’s consistent with what we’ve seen already with big American defense companies,” said Andrew Davies, a cyber warfare analyst with a government backed defense think-tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS