Japanese government issued a warning on Wednesday Since 2019, a Chinese hacking group has been accused of targeting and breaching dozens of government agencies, organizations and individuals in the country.
Japan's National Police Agency and the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity have blamed a group for the year-long hacking. mirror face.
“The Mirrorface attack campaign is an organized cyber attack suspected to involve China, with the primary objective of stealing information related to Japan's national security and advanced technology,” authorities wrote in the alert, according to a machine translation.
A longer version of the warning Targets included Japan's foreign and defense ministries, the country's space agency, as well as politicians, journalists, private companies and tech think tanks. According to the Associated Press.
Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) in July 2024 wrote in a blog post that MirrorFace was “targeted initially at media, political organizations, think tanks and universities, but has shifted to manufacturers and research institutions since 2023.”
In 2022, cyber security firms Research published by ESET Details of a spear phishing email campaign run by Mirrorface targeting Japanese political entities and specific politicians ahead of the country's elections. At the time, the agency said Mirrorface did not appear to be linked to other known Chinese government hacking groups.
Spearfishing is the same tactic that Mirrorface used in the year-long campaign released Wednesday. The warning said Mirrorface sent emails containing malicious attachments in three separate campaigns: one targeting individuals working for think tanks, active and retired politicians and journalists from 2019 to 2023; Another campaign from 2023 targeting internet-connected network devices used in companies “in the semiconductor, manufacturing, information and communications, academic and aerospace sectors”; and a third starting in June 2024 targeting “academics, think tanks, politicians and the media” in Japan; According to a machine translation of the document.
Japan, a longtime ally of the United States, has a pacifist constitution, which Experts argue contributed to its limited capabilities in cyberspace. In 2023, The Washington Post reported this The US National Security Agency discovered in 2020 that Chinese military hackers had compromised Japan's most sensitive classified defense networks.