Japan’s wave of corporate breaches is the latest sign that AI is changing how hacking works.

Since Sept 25, 18 Japanese companies have disclosed breaches, including Tokyo Metro, Japan Post, Lawson, Nikkei, Yamato and Sagawa. Attackers got about 6.6M Times Car accounts, some with driver’s license images. Burger King Japan says 11.18M app member records were affected, and Sourcenext says up to 22.5M records may be out.

Last week, JPCERT/CC, the country’s national computer emergency response team, posted its findings from the investigations into these breaches. The attackers used AI to scan for known vulnerabilities and to attack companies’ APIs. Often they did this by pulling apart a company’s Android app to find the endpoints and any keys left in the code. It is also no surprise that Japanese companies are particularly vulnerable. Japan is still catching up on basic digitization, with many offices still using fax machines to this day!

Now even the PM is getting involved, urging anyone running a PHP website to patch two critical vulnerabilities immediately, or temporarily take the site offline if they can't.
https://x.com/takaichi_sanae/status/2112890642590564386