In August 2023, The Washington Post reported that in 2020, hackers working for the People’s Liberation Army had penetrated Japan’s defense networks, the country’s “most sensitive computer systems.”
It was a horror story, the kind of assault on major private and governmental computer systems that happens only every other day or so. The hackers had enjoyed “deep, persistent access” and sucked up everything they could get their hands on: “plans, capabilities, assessments of military shortcomings.”
The U.S National Security Agency found out about the breach—probably not because China had sent NSA a memo—and NSA director General Paul Nakasone and deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger rushed to Japan to help it cope with “one of the most damaging hacks in that country’s modern history.”
Despite the NSA alert and personal trip, despite the severity of the exposure, reportedly nothing was done for months, until, if one is to believe the Post story, Japan finally acted in response to further prodding by the United States. “Since then, under American scrutiny, the Japanese have announced they are ramping up network security, boosting the cybersecurity budget tenfold over the next five years and increasing their military cybersecurity force fourfold to 4,000 people.”
Without American pressure and oversight, the Japanese government would not have hustled to recover from China’s massive looting of its defense secrets—“one of the most damaging hacks in that country’s modern history”—and eject the hackers lurking in its systems? The hackers from China, the same China that lobs missiles into Japanese waters and bullies Japanese fishing vessels? Okay.
China, which already boasts the world’s largest legion of state-sponsored hackers, is expanding its cyber capabilities. Since mid-2021, the U.S. government and Western cybersecurity firms have documented increasing Chinese penetration of critical infrastructure in the United States, Guam and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. The targets include communication, transportation and utility systems, Microsoft said in May.
China-based hackers recently compromised the emails of the U.S. commerce secretary, the U.S. ambassador to China and other senior diplomats—even amid an effort by the Biden administration to thaw frosty relations with Beijing.
Another mystery. Even though the omnicompetent Biden administration has been “trying to thaw frosty relations” with Beijing—on the assumption that making nice with the Chinese Communist Party-State will make it nice—the Chinese state has still been acting like itself?
But enough about what happened four years ago and its aftermath. Let us consider what happened four years ago and its aftermath. The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun has just reported that “U.S. Warned Japan of China’s Hacking of Official Diplomatic Telegram System; Reinforcing Cybersecurity Key Concern” (February 5, 2024).
According to the sources, the U.S. government informed Japan in the summer of 2020, when the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in power, that the computer networks of Japanese diplomatic missions abroad had been breached by Chinese hackers. Although Washington did not disclose the specifics of the leaked information and how it learned of the cyber-attacks, it suggested that official telegrams between the Japanese Embassy in Beijing and the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, among other parties, were being widely accessed by Chinese authorities.
At the time, then U.S. National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone and other officials were prompted to visit Japan to meet with Japanese high-ranking government officials. Japanese and U.S. working-level officials also discussed how to respond to the matter….
Regarding cyber-attacks on Japan, The Washington Post reported in August last year that Chinese military hackers had compromised the Japanese government’s computer networks which handle defense secrets. However, this is the first time that a breach of the Foreign Ministry’s system on diplomatic telegrams has been revealed.
This story does not quite make perfectly clear whether the breach of the Foreign Ministry’s system of diplomatic telegrams was part and parcel of the same Chinese hack attack or series of attacks on Japan’s defense systems that the NSA noticed around the same time in 2020. But it seems so.
Meanwhile, back in 2024, a) drastic strengthening of the Japanese government’s cyber defense system is underway, and b) “However, it is expected that the submission of related legislation to the ordinary Diet session will be postponed.” Because…?
Following up on Yomiuri Shimbun’s report with its cliffhanger ending, The Washington Times says that “China-Japan relations have been strained in recent days. The Japanese press, again citing unidentified official sources, reported that Chinese coast guard vessels were broadcasting radio warnings to Japan Self-Defense Forces aircraft to depart the airspace over the Senkaku Islands. The uninhabited islands lie west of Japan’s Okinawa, northeast of Taiwan and east of China, which calls them the Diaoyus. Since 2012, when the dispute flared up, Chinese coast guard units and Japanese fishing vessels have had multiple tense encounters.”
Beautiful days in the neighborhood.
