Dai-ichi Life Hit by Unauthorized Access—Data on 120,000 Employees Possibly Leaked; 5ch: “Isn’t That a Bit Much?”

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The story

On October 2, Dai-ichi Life Group and Dai-ichi Life Insurance announced that the HR system jointly used by both companies had suffered unauthorized access, potentially leaking information on roughly 120,000 employees. Of these, about 70,000 belong to former employees. On 5ch, posters lined this incident up alongside the recent string of corporate data breaches — Times Car, Yamato Transport, Seicomart, and others — with many asking “isn’t that too many?” The thread spiraled into speculation about a shared underlying cause and debate over whether AI is being used to carry out these cyberattacks.

Oct 2 (Fri), 16:52 JST

ITmedia NEWS

Dai-ichi Life Group and Dai-ichi Life Insurance announced on October 2 that the HR system used by both companies had suffered unauthorized access, potentially leaking information on approximately 120,000 employees. Of that total, around 70,000 are said to be former employees.

Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

What people said

4AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:43
I think it's pointless no matter how much security you put on a system that's connected to the internet.
There's no way we can match overseas hackers.
9AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:45
Re: #4
More like AI is going to outclass them even further.
102AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:10
Re: #4
Re: #9
Hackers are using AI.
Apparently there's know-how out there for smooth-talking Claude into getting 'brainwashed' and using it for cyberattacks.
8AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:44
Times Car
Dai-ichi Life
Yamato Transport
Seicomart
Avahouse

Isn't that getting to be a few too many?
16AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:46
You should probably pull your money out of regional banks.
Their systems are old and keep getting breached.
Online banks are more nimble, so they're still safer for now.
76AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:01
Re: #16
Just try working in the IT/web industry once, seriously.
20AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:47
Kanji of the year should be "漏" (leak).
Everyone's awareness of outside intrusion is way too low across the board.
Though some of it's inside jobs too.
34AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:49
Re: #20
Maybe it also fits because of all the flooding this year — water "leaking" (漏れる) everywhere too.
25AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:48
AI makes it easy to whip up programs these days, I guess.
33AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:49
Re: #25
Maybe someone told an AI 'look into Dai-ichi Life' and it went off and did its own digging behind the scenes.
28AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:49
This looks like everyone's getting hit at once.
Isn't anyone putting out a statement? All the big names are getting wiped out.
44AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:52
Re: #28
Could they all be running the same database?
Like, is it Oracle or MySQL?
37AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:50
Feels like we're about to get rewound 50 years all at once.
Banks going back to handwritten forms and greeting letters by mail.
46AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:53
Re: #37
It's the servers holding that data that are being targeted.
57AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:57
Don't sneak your announcement out while everyone's distracted by the Times Car mess.
64AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:58
Re: #57
Even the Digital Agency is trying to ride this wave lol
58AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:57
Wouldn't be surprised if a megabank leaks data before long.
72AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:59
Re: #58
Apparently they're already discussing building new security systems.
With AI and next-gen PCs — can't quite put it into words, but some seriously powerful stuff has shown up —
so companies are reportedly getting together to hash out new security setups.
63AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:58
Times Car, Dai-ichi Life, Nichirei…
They just keep coming.
69AnonymousOct 3, 2026 15:59
Re: #63
Even the Digital Agency, before Times…
84AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:02
I'd think just banning outside access in the first place would prevent most of this.
Why do they even leave settings that allow access from outside the company?
88AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:04
Re: #84
Probably the effect of remote work spreading?
Also because they leave it set up so you can log in and make entries anytime after a transaction.
91AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:05
Isn't this just AI being abused to pull this off?
Can it really leak this easily?
95AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:07
Re: #91
Yeah, it's doable.
You just plant it in advance and trigger it.
Cyberattacks are easy to escalate in a controlled way —
once you've gotten this far, you decide which industry to hit next.
98AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:08
Re: #91
There was a Japanese hacker arrested on suspicion of pranking a bunch of people by force-canceling their accounts,
and it was said AI was used for that too.
97AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:08
At this point the kanji of the year, forced through however awkwardly, is basically just "AI."
As for buzzword of the year, I don't care if it's baseball, the Asian Games,
Jungrilla, or whatever.
132AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:19
Re: #97
If AI had to be one kanji, it's gotta be "愛" (ai, meaning 'love') — same pronunciation, case closed.
113AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:12
Maybe the punchline is that they're all contracted with the same security company.
It's not like AI suddenly made brute-forcing way faster or anything —
unless the access keys are literally identical across all of them, there's no explaining this many breaches happening at once.
119AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:14
Re: #113
There's definitely a common thread.
The targeted industries do show a pattern, so it seems like something's being narrowed down somehow.
124AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:15
Re: #113
There was that story about companies that contracted the same security firm and granted it full OS-level access —
turned out to be a design flaw in the security software's settings, and once it pushed an update, outages hit everywhere, causing massive damage.
Apple, though, apparently caught on early and refused that level of access on macOS, so it kept running without a hitch.
143AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:23
Cyberattacks have been rising since 2022, well before AI got this powerful.
Come on.
152AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:25
There's no proof AI is doing this, but doesn't Re: #143 also fail as evidence that AI *isn't* doing it?
185AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:38
Re: #152
Didn't you know AI is said to recommend working around the Personal Information Protection Act?
160AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:27
Re: #146
Yeah, that's how it looks from the outside.
On the other hand, on the server side itself, how much can actually be logged — like which account accessed what, and how much of that can be retained?
Is the overhead too huge? Is there really no mechanism that keeps all of that?
172AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:33
Re: #160
I'd think things like downloads or copies to disk would at least leave a record.
184AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:36
Re: #172
Ah, thanks for the answer.
I don't know system operations that well, but I guess how much forensic data survives depends on the settings and environment built in beforehand?
186AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:38
Re: #184
Sorry, I don't get what you're saying lol
187AnonymousOct 3, 2026 16:38
Re: #184
My bad — correction: not "that well," more like "not at all."

Background and Key Points of This Story

In recent years, a string of data breaches has hit companies and government bodies one after another — Times Car, Yamato Transport, Seicomart, the Digital Agency — and Dai-ichi Life’s announcement lands squarely in that same wave. The thread zeroed in on how “simultaneous” these incidents seem, speculating that a shared security vendor or database might be behind it, but no technical link between the companies has actually been confirmed — this remains pure community speculation. Plenty of posts also suggested AI is being used in these cyberattacks, but cyberattacks themselves have actually been on the rise since before 2022, and no evidence has been presented that directly ties the spread of generative AI to the increase in attack numbers. One point readers can easily miss is that of the 120,000 people affected, 70,000 were former employees whose personal data was still being retained after they left — this wasn’t limited to current staff, a detail that’s easy to overlook in the original report.

*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Dai-ichi Life Hit by Unauthorized Access — Data on 120,000 Employees Possibly Leaked, Former Staff Included“.

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