Japanese House Of Representatives And Other Diplomatic Offices Hit By Virus Attack

Japanese government officials have announced that over the last several months, viruses have hit its House of Representatives and Ministry of Foreign affairs during cyber attacks. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs offices along with its overseas embassies and consulates were targeted by emails in a focused attack with the goal of stealing information.

The announcement came from Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura this week. Computers in the Japanese House were infected in late August according to Fujimura. The computers in the overseas Foreign Affairs offices handle low security information and the separate network that handles high security information was not infected according to officials.

Fujimura is specific in pointing out that there was no leak of confidential information. However, he declined to comments on the specific locations and nature of the attack. If the attack was from emails as previously stated, the source was likely infected file attachments. The computers in the House that were infected in August were identified and cut off from the network. PC World reports that local Japanese media are saying the attacks were malicious and claim that logins and passwords to protect email and other private data were stolen in the attacks.

[via PC World]