Japanese banks being targeted by Chinese hackers, tension growing

Cybercriminals from China are increasingly targeting Japanese bank account holders, with more than $16 million stolen from the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group during the first six months of 2014. Japanese police officials report a rising number of Chinese nations being arrested for cyber-related crimes, and security experts point towards Chinese-based IP addresses.

The chaos begins by a phishing attack that tricks users into providing their passwords. Money is transferred out of Japan and people are recruited to visit ATMs and withdraw as much money as they can. Products are purchased in Japan and the stolen items are shipped and re-sold in China.

Earlier in the year, Japanese government websites were compromised by suspected Chinese hackers, with most of the sites temporarily dropped by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. However, other websites were defaced with political messages related to Japan-China sociopolitical propaganda - as both countries continue their efforts to rebuild an extremely tumultuous relationship.