Japanese defence cyberattack traced to hacked PC

The worrying cyberattack on Japanese defence contractors in August was probably the work of a single attacker looking to steal industrial secrets, local newspapers are reporting.

Japanese police have now traced the point of attack to a PC based in the Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies (SJAC), from which an email containing malware was sent on 26 August to the target companies, Mitsubishi Heavy, Kawasaki Heavy, claiming to be a legitimate communication from one of its employees.

Since both companies are members of the SJAC, the hope would have been that the ruse would catch the recipient off-guard. The attack was skilful enough to reproduce a genuine email from an employee sent to the same recipient only hours earlier. Police still maintain that no significant data was lost during the attacks, although one of the two companies, Mitsubishi Heavy, admitted some weeks ago that 83 of its PCs and servers had been infected by the malware.