China’s Fingerprints Are All Over Spy Operation Targeting Japan

The Chinese regime may be using cyberattacks against the US as a model for attacks elsewhere.

Japan Pension Service head Toichiro Mizushima during a press conference at the Welfare Ministry in Tokyo on June 1, 2015. Japan's pension service said on June 1 it suffered a hack attack that led to 1.25 million cases of personal data being leaked. JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images

News Analysis

New evidence suggests the Chinese regime is targeting Japan in a large-scale spy operation that mirrors similar campaigns targeting the United States.

The campaign that targets confidential information was exposed on Aug. 20 by researchers at cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab. Among the hundreds of victims targeted in the campaign since at least November 2013 are the Japanese pension system and government organizations, as well as targets in research, manufacturing, and finance.

“This is the first campaign known to Kaspersky Lab that is strictly focused on Japanese targets—and it is still active,” states the Kaspersky report analyzing the attack.

Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said in an email interview, “We don’t perform attribution.” Yet, while they don’t explicitly state who is behind the attack, which researchers have dubbed “Blue Termite,” four pieces of evidence suggest its the work of hackers tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

An infographic from cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab details the targets in a new cyberespionage campaign targeting Japan. The attack, which researchers are calling Blue Termite, is aimed at several government offices, businesses, and research organizations in Japan. Kaspersky Lab