Data breach threatens to expose 125,000 staff records across Japan’s police forces

TOKYO – The personal information of officers and other employees at 22 prefectural police forces in Japan may have leaked following a recent data breach at disaster information services firm Arcadia, National Police Agency officials said on Oct 21.The possible leak affecting nearly half of Japan’s 47 prefectural police forces comes amid a string of similar incidents at Japanese companies in various industries.The potentially exposed data include about 125,000 records such as names and e-mail addresses of police officers and other employees at 22 prefectural police forces.Among the police forces, Kyoto and Fukuoka police, as well as those in Shimane and Yamaguchi, suffered leaks of about 16,000 e-mail addresses of residents registered for security alert services.No investigative information was leaked, the agency said.Meanwhile, IwaiCosmo Securities said the same day a cyberattack on a contracted company’s computer system, which processes the Osaka-based brokerage firm’s trading orders, resulted in the execution of unauthorised orders in seven customer accounts.The attack on Oct 14 targeted the system run and maintained by Trade Works, based in Tokyo, but did not involve account hijacking.Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said in a news conference that the Financial Services Agency has requested IwaiCosmo to analyse the break-in and formulate preventive measures.The brokerage said the affected accounts have been restored to their state before the unauthorized orders.The cyberattack, believed to be carried out with the use of artificial intelligence, also resulted in the exposure of 4,975 customers’ names and e-mail addresses, but transaction passwords were not stolen, it said.Earlier in the day, Recruit revealed a possible leak of personal information involving 3.7 million accounts for its Carsensor used car information service.The incident led to suspensions of used car information services of Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors, which rely on Recruit’s system.Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors said on their official websites that the suspensions were meant to protect customers and clients and to assess the impact of the cyberattack on Recruit. KYODO NEWS