Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Police Grudge Behind Japan Hacker Campaign: Reports

TOKYO – A computer hacker who taunted Japanese police for months with a string of vexing cyber riddles launched the campaign as part of a grudge against authorities, media reports said Tuesday.

TOKYO – A computer hacker who taunted Japanese police for months with a string of vexing cyber riddles launched the campaign as part of a grudge against authorities, media reports said Tuesday.

After cracking a set of riddles, police in Tokyo reportedly found a digital memory card attached to a cat’s collar which revealed a message saying “a past experience in a criminal case” had caused the hacker to act.

The message said the case “changed” the anonymous hacker’s life, and added that “no more messages will be sent”, Jiji Press news agency and other media reported.

The note may bring to a close a bizarre investigation which has seen threats against a number of venues — including a school and a kindergarten attended by grandchildren of Emperor Akihito — sent from computers around the country.

The National Police Agency (NPA) was embarrassed after it emerged that officers had extracted “confessions” from four people who had nothing to do with the threats.

Police held one of the suspects for several weeks before a broadcaster and lawyer received another anonymous message containing information that could only have been known by the real culprit.

The four were released as the NPA chief made a humiliating climbdown, acknowledging police had been the victims of a hacker and promising his cyber-crime unit would brush up its skills. oh/pb/sm

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.