Japan's space agency hit by malware for second time in a year

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has reportedly suffered its second major malware incident in under a year after an attack that has resulted in the leaking of details of the country's top-secret Epsilon rocket programme.

According to unconfirmed reports, on 21 November JAXA discovered an unidentified data-stealing "virus" on a computer at the Tsukuba Space Centre used to store details of the country's prestigious solid fuel rocket programme.

No further malware was found on nearby systems, officials reported, which has raised the question of whether this was a conventional malware attack or something more targeted. If it is a conventional attack, it would be a remarkable coincidence. Japanese Government agencies have suffered an embarrassing string of attacks in the last three years, but the most obvious precedent is a Trojan attack that affected JAXA itself as recently as January 2012.