The Japanese government published an alert on Wednesday accusing a Chinese hacking group of targeting and breaching dozens of government organizations, companies, and individuals in the country since 2019. From a report: Japan’s National Police Agency and the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity attributed the years-long hacking spree to a group called MirrorFace.
“The MirrorFace attack campaign is an organized cyber attack suspected to be linked to China, with the primary objective of stealing information related to Japan’s national security and advanced technology,” the authorities wrote in the alert, according to a machine translation. A longer version of the alert said the targets included Japan’s Foreign and Defense ministries, the country’s space agency, as well as politicians, journalists, private companies and tech think tanks, according to the Associated Press. In July 2024 Japan’s Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) wrote in a blog post that MirrorFace’s “targets were initially media, political organisations, think tanks and universities, but it has shifted to manufacturers and research institutions since 2023.”