The Digital Agency announced on September 11, 2026, that its network systems had been accessed by an unauthorized outside party, and that the personal information of roughly 246,000 people — including the names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of government employees — may have been leaked. The agency says My Number data and financial account information were not included. On 5ch, threads shared information suggesting the breach was caused by the misuse of an account belonging to an outsourced contractor responsible for system maintenance, while other posters criticized the Digital Agency’s institutional setup and debated just how far the real-world damage from the leak might extend.
The Digital Agency announced on the 11th that its network systems, including work computers it operates, had been accessed by an outside party without authorization, and that the personal information of roughly 246,000 people, including the names and addresses of government employees, may have leaked.
The personal information that may have leaked included not only names and addresses but also email addresses and phone numbers. The agency says it does not include My Number data or bank account information.
The Digital Agency apologized, saying, “We are truly sorry for the great trouble and concern this has caused those involved.”
Ugh, this is gonna end up in the hands of a tokuryu gang (loosely organized, anonymous crime rings recruited via social media).
6AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:02
Guess we're proving we're a digital backwater all by ourselves
58AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:25
Re: #6
Oh, so developed countries never get hacked?
8AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:03
About 246,000 government employees, huh…
Are there even that many people working there?
9AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:03
Well, this is an organization where you get praised just for being able to use a smartphone.
10AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:03
Re: #4
No point beefing up security — this was probably on purpose.
16AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:05
Pathetic. Some 'Digital Agency.' Just disband the whole thing.
17AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:05
Make Anno the director and let him bring in his own people.
21AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:07
Our Digital Agency is useless at everything except plugging and unplugging USB drives.
22AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:07
Put someone competent in charge, like Taiwan did.
23AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:07
Well, as usual, nobody's gonna take responsibility for it lol
26AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:10
The fact that they can even detect traces of a possible leak is pretty impressive — real progress for them.
56AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:22
Re: #26
Might be the usual pattern where the US tips them off with 'hey, your data got stolen.' Didn't that happen before too?
28AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:10
>Personal information of roughly 246,000 people, including names and addresses of government employees, may have leaked
Oh, this one's bad…
29AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:10
They got into the network and only employee info leaked? Isn't that a little too convenient?
30AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:10
This is what a country taken over by the mafia looks like.
31AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:10
Apparently it's about 90% of full-time staff. Though that number might include family members too, so the breakdown isn't clear.
32AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:11
The Digital Agency chief's getting fired as a scapegoat lol. There's probably a mole among the bureaucrats or something.
33AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:12
Well, it's a country that runs on AWS, so…
34AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:13
Figured this would happen eventually. My Number data's probably getting stolen too, sooner or later.
35AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:13
Not only useless, they're actively spreading damage around.
38AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:14
Replacing everyone with AI would probably work better.
41AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:16
Is there anything this country can actually do properly? And honestly, they've probably leaked ordinary citizens' info too.
42AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:16
The email leak is the worst part honestly — inbox is gonna get buried in spam.
44AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:18
There's no way you can trust a My Number system run by a country like this. And sure enough it went and became mandatory — this country's finished.
45AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:18
If a foreign power buys this up, we'll probably end up as a target when Judgment Day comes.
47AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:18
This info's probably gonna end up with a tokuryu gang eventually.
50AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:21
Guess it's better that it's not ransomware… or wait, is ransomware part of this too?
52AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:21
Still, thanks to the Digital Agency we got rid of paper and went digital, and they banned those dark-pattern tricks where subscription sites make it a pain to cancel by shuffling you between pages.
54AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:22
There was that time an LDP lawmaker at the Digital Agency didn't even know what a USB drive was — they're way too amateur for this.
55AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:22
Given the numbers, doesn't this mean basically every government employee in Kasumigaseki had their name and address leaked?
Feels like this should be bigger news.
64AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:27
Re: #55
If it's just bureaucrats affected, no need to make a big deal of it in the news, right? Not like it concerns regular people.
69AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:31
Honestly, I bet the cause is something lame like someone plugging in an infected USB drive.
82AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:38
Re: #69
>Large numbers of files on the server were accessed using the account of a maintenance/operations staff member
https://www.digital.go.jp/news/2026-0911-01
So it was the outsourced contractor handling maintenance that leaked it.
89AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:42
You'd think Digital Agency staff would be full of experts from places like the National Institute of Informatics, but is it actually just a bunch of part-time 'IT construction laborers'? (slang for overworked, low-status IT grunt workers)
93AnonymousSep 11, 2026 12:46
Re: #89
Yeah, the contractor wet the bed on this one. Social engineering.
110AnonymousSep 11, 2026 13:02
Does a country like this even need an intelligence agency?
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The Digital Agency is a relatively new ministry established in 2021, tasked with driving the digitalization of government administration and overseeing many of the shared IT systems used across the government. As some of the replies above note, official statements indicate this leak may have resulted from the misuse of an account belonging to a contractor responsible for system maintenance — a different route from the simple ‘infected USB drive’ theory initially speculated in the thread, which is worth keeping in mind. It’s also unclear from the official announcement whether the figure of ‘246,000’ refers only to full-time employees themselves or also includes family members, and interpretations varied within the thread as well. My Number data and bank account information are said to be excluded, but this is based solely on the current official disclosure, and the scope could change as the investigation progresses — an easy point to misread.
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