Subscriber Discussion

Japan To Hack Its Own Citizens!

U
Undisclosed #1
•Feb 02, 2019
IPVMU Certified

From CNN

Beginning on February 20, Japanese officials will start probing 200 million IP addresses linked to the country, sniffing out devices with poor or little security.
A law was passed last year to enable the mass hack, as part of security preparations ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIAC), two-thirds of cyber attacks in Japan in 2016 targeted IOT devices. Officials fear some kind of IOT-related attack could be used to target or disrupt the Olympics.
As well as testing which servers have no security, the Japanese team will also test 100 common username and password combinations, such as "admin/admin" or "1234," the MIAC said in a statement.

Apparently the idea is to test for devices exposed with default passwords, and then notify the telcom providers with the IPs of unsecured devices, so that they can contact the users.

Should the U.S. hack itself?

Thoughts?

(1)
U
Undisclosed #2
•Feb 03, 2019

I see no problem with being proactive. I am quite sure there is a large pool of hardware that may not have current firmware, weak passwords or simply just configured by someone not fully qualified. 

Everyone should hack themselves, perhaps just build some AI / ML bot to do it for us(keeping those annoying buzzwords alive).

U
Undisclosed #1
•Feb 03, 2019
IPVMU Certified
In reply to Undisclosed #2

agree.

Btw, it sounds like it’s basically a read-only mirai attack.

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