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The story
On October 8, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had disrupted attack tools provided by Yongxin Zhicheng Technology Group, a China-based cybersecurity company. A Chinese government-backed hacking group is said to have used the tools to break into critical infrastructure, including U.S. power companies and Japanese airports, and Japan’s National Police Agency reportedly cooperated with the FBI and others in response. Which airport was targeted has not been disclosed. The 5ch thread drew a wide range of reactions — laments over the fragility of Japan’s cyber defenses, clashes over which side, the U.S. or China, Japan should stand with, and even theories pinning the real culprit on Russia or North Korea.
US disrupts Chinese cyberattack — critical infrastructure targeted, including Japanese airports
[WASHINGTON, Kyodo] The U.S. Department of Justice announced on the 8th that it had disrupted attack tools supplied by a Beijing, China-based cybersecurity company. The tools, it said, were used by a Chinese government-backed hacking group to hack critical infrastructure. Targets included U.S. power companies and Japanese airports, and Japan’s National Police Agency cooperated with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and others. Which Japanese airport was targeted has not been disclosed.
According to the Department of Justice, the cybersecurity company is Yongxin Zhicheng Technology Group.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
So basically China's declared war on the entire world (minus Russia and North Korea)?
China gearing up to go to war.
Isn't this basically the same as getting hit with a missile? What about that angle — what happens to collective self-defense rights here?
And 5ch might go down with it too… (´･ω･｀)
That just proved they're being completely played, lol
Doing this right after Xi's visit to the US would just make people think 'what is Trump even doing' — it'd backfire.
'Mama' seems pretty weak on IT, though…
Isn't that 'Mama' guy actually a Chinese account?
Only option left is to quit the internet. Back to primitive, pre-internet life we go.
It's the smart people causing the trouble in the first place, so that's a lost cause.
AI really has made the world a lot more convenient. But people abusing it like this was always expected — the real question is whether those guys can even control it.
They're just building stuff nobody needs, lol
Feels like the downsides are so heavy that it'd only be worth it if it delivered real, practical payoffs — like achieving science and technology that's literally impossible for humans to do themselves.
It's just that the 'mythos' is too strong. And this isn't even the real fight yet.
Sounds like Japan's airports didn't even notice they were being attacked.
The more America's AI advances, the more China's AI advances too, you know. The more these AIs interact with each other, the more they learn autonomously — America doesn't gain anything from that, but China just keeps learning and learning.
Just wreck China's infrastructure with an AI attack and they won't be able to develop anything, lol
Even that method is something they'd end up learning from, though.
They were already saying it was China.
>I had Russia as the runner-up and North Korea as the long shot
Whether they're coordinating with China or not is unclear, but I bet they're all doing it at the same time — not as official state actions, just individuals or small groups acting on their own.
So modern AI can dish out flattery now too, huh
A programming language is just a means for humans and computers to talk to each other, so in the coming era where AI writes the software, new languages won't even be necessary. We're heading toward an age where you just ask it to 'build me this' and out pops an executable file.
Background and key points of this story
This crackdown was carried out by the U.S. Department of Justice against hacking tools developed and provided by the Chinese company Yongxin Zhicheng Technology Group, and should be understood as a countermeasure against state-backed attack groups’ tactics for targeting critical infrastructure. The claim that Japanese airports were among the targets was reported only by Kyodo News, and no specific facility names or details of any damage have been made public. On the thread, frustration over Japan’s digital defense posture and debate over which side, the U.S. or China, Japan should align with erupted at the same time — but these are fundamentally separate issues, and care should be taken not to conflate the technical/legal measure of disrupting attack tools with the diplomatic question of where allegiance should lie. Also, because it typically takes time to grasp the full scope of damage from state-directed cyberattacks, today’s announcement may well be just the tip of the iceberg.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Flash+) thread ‘[Breaking] US announces it has disrupted attack tools after China targeted critical infrastructure, including US power companies and Japanese airports, in cyberattacks.’
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