Japan's financial authorities are stepping up cybersecurity efforts after the fallout from an attack on a server-hosting company spilled over into unauthorized foreign-exchange trades.
Five foreign-exchange brokers, including Goldenway Japan and Oanda Securities, have reported customer losses suspected to be linked to a hack targeting GMO Internet Group, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Tuesday.
"We have received no reports of new fraudulent transactions and will handle the situation on high alert," said Katayama, who oversees cybersecurity in her dual role as minister of financial services.
Tokyo is grappling with a wave of high-profile digital security incidents that have exposed vulnerabilities across corporate Japan. That has stoked alarm about the risks posed by artificial intelligence, which hackers can use to automate the discovery and exploitation of software flaws on an unprecedented scale. Advanced frontier AI models could also launch attacks autonomously.
The AI threat crystallized earlier this month on a global scale as AI tools helped uncover a critical bug in a programming language used in about 70% of the world's websites, triggering waves of automated attacks that forced some operators to temporarily shut down services to protect their systems.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Monday ordered an emergency package of cybersecurity measures to be drafted by the end of next week following a series of data breaches affecting Japanese companies.
"A wave of cyberattacks targeting domestic companies has caused large-scale data leaks and related damage," Takaichi said, warning that the severity of the fallout merits swift countermeasures.
The government response comes as GMO founder Masatoshi Kumagai issued an unusually direct public appeal for closer public-private cooperation on digital security.
In a statement over the weekend, Kumagai apologized for the security incident and pledged full compensation for losses stemming from the breach.
"The internet itself is beginning to break down," Kumagai wrote, saying that advances in AI have dramatically lowered the bar for sophisticated cyberattacks.
By his estimates, as many as 26,739 servers and customer accounts across more than 70 securities and foreign-exchange firms in Japan and overseas may have been exposed to a ransomware attack. GMO said hackers threatened to leak sensitive information unless it paid $50 million.
After GMO refused, the attackers carried out their threat and published data allegedly belonging to one client. The company warned the public against viewing or spreading the compromised files.
A recent report published by IBM puts a price on the potential costs of AI-enabled attacks.
As attacks become faster and cheaper to launch, vulnerabilities are getting more expensive to fix, according to research from IBM and the Ponemon Institute. On average, AI-powered breaches cost companies $6 million.
"This growing imbalance-where attacks can be launched for thousands while breaches cost millions-is fundamentally changing the economics of cyber risk," the report said.
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