Not to be left behind on the modern field of cyber warfare, Japan is planning to develop its first-ever defensive computer virus to help ward off cyber attacks.
The Kyodo News revealed that Japan will develop its first-ever computer virus as a defense measure against cyber attacks and that the development will be completed by next March.
The Defense Ministry plans to use the malware as a vaccine that could neutralize the other malicious codes.
The Japanese Government aims at improving its defense capabilities in the fifth domain of warfare and wants to be ready to face threats from the cyberspace.
The island nation is well aware it must invest heavily to attempt closing the extensive gap between its own cyber capabilities and those of the major players in the field.
"Japan lags behind other countries in addressing the threat of cyberattacks. It plans to increase the number of personnel in its cyberspace unit to 220 from 150, compared with 6,200 in the United States, 7,000 in North Korea and 130,000 in China, according to the ministry."
In Japan, anytime any capability is considered which could theoretically be used for offense as well as defense, there is controversy stemming from Article 9 of the country's pacifist constitution, which was adopted on May 3, 1947 (after World War II)
"Some defense experts say the ability to obstruct an enemy's use of cyberspace could exceed the limits of the country's exclusively defense-oriented policy."
Those concerned should be reassured however as the defense ministry has stated that the virus "will not be used for pre-emptive attack or active defense"
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday May 05 2019, @10:19PM
China & Russia would claim they've been doing it for years...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @10:24PM (1 child)
Japanese tentacle virus vs Godzilla
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @12:23AM
Hentaizilla.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday May 05 2019, @10:53PM
Our Doctors from the great States of Tennessee & California took the A.I.D.S. Virus. Changed it around in certain ways. And used that one to cure the famous Bubble Boy Disease. The one that Paul Simon sings about. Where, these boys had to live in the very special plastic bubble their whole life. And if they step out, so sorry, they die very quickly. From things that nobody ever gets. And they've done the incredible treatment on 10 little boys, they let them out of their very special bubbles, they're walking, or crawling around. In the dirt and the filth. And none of them have died yet, possibly Paul will be writing some new material. So interesting but, censored by Biased Soylent (Fake) News Editors. Too bad! foxnews.com/health/st-jude-doctors-claim-cure-for-bubble-boy-disease [foxnews.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday May 05 2019, @11:16PM (5 children)
This is a great idea, What could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday May 05 2019, @11:48PM (3 children)
People don't know this, virus is constantly changing. You do Flu Shot, maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. I never get that one, and I never get the flu. But I have friends, they get the shot and they get so sick. So I don't believe it that one. But, the folks that believe in it. They say, Flu Season is coming, time to get another shot. Not because it wore off. Because, new virus. And they have a new one coming out every year. And Computer Virus is the same. They have the Anti Virus. And, every year they come out with a new one. Because the virus changed. And maybe it was created to do very good things, it can change into a bad one so easily. So easily and all the Computers are getting very sick!!!
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday May 06 2019, @12:11AM (2 children)
Found the anti-vac among us!
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Monday May 06 2019, @12:50AM (1 child)
I'm not against Vaccine per say. Some vaccinations are so important. Some, not so important. Some work great. And some, not so great. Must look at each one. And, be careful not to do too many at once. Ask your Cyber person, what if you put 8, 9, 10 Anti Virus on all at once? Very bad for Computer. And when you have a little baby and they're giving the baby 8, 9 10 shots on the same day -- in some cases in just minutes -- it's very rough on that baby.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday May 06 2019, @04:24PM
Measles gets a bad rap because you typically live through it anyway. That isn't the entire story however.
One of the nasty effects of measles is that it heavily degrades the 'memory' the immune system has of past illnesses, weakening immune response across the spectrum for those who become ill. One statement I heard somewhere was that hospitalizations from other illnesses decreased as much as 50% following widespread Measles vaccination.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @02:23PM
They get SONY to do it.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Sunday May 05 2019, @11:18PM (1 child)
I'm not sure I'll be happy when my honey-pot gets patched. Then again, I will know who did it!
Seems like there are all sorts of settled property laws this will bump up against, but when it comes to "warfare" its all fair ey?
Hmm.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 05 2019, @11:56PM
Japan. I gotta figure that at least some of the vast quantity of anime concepts would end up leaking into the real world. Good for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @11:49PM (1 child)
Although at first glance it looks crazy, the general idea is not bad: automating incident response. A defensive malware need not do much, if it manages to ping back a public clearnet IP, locale settings of the system, discovered neighboring nodes on the network and maybe grab some random files from the home folder this would be a huge step towards credible attribution of CNE attacks.
If the japanese succeed in designing a malware that infects attackers and manages to surreptitiously exfiltrate these few bits of information, I'd not only be impressed, I'd be envious. Because incident response is hard and attribution even harder.
With these high hopes, I still suspect it will be some lame version of "Black ICE/offensive firewall" [wikipedia.org] that tries to "hack back the hackers" or make an attacking machine self-destruct in a blaze of blue electrical fire and complementary burnout of any would-be hackers' neural implants. Lol.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @06:06PM
Actually, this idea is bad. It's one of those Hollywood ideas which sounds amazing, but if you know the technology, you realize it's terrible.
As an example, imagine you have been infected and unknowingly have Back Orifice installed on your machine. Now the attacker accesses your machine, and uses it to attack Japan.
Or even further, imagine somebody uses another machine as an intermediary proxy, and then uses an Remote Desktop to access another machine, and then uses that other machine to get to your machine, and then uses your computer to attack Japan.
How will the "defensive malware" know which machine to counter-hack? How sure are you that they will get the correct one and not hurt a hapless bystander?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 06 2019, @12:12AM
Oh gee, autonomous malware, "purely for defense." Right. I can't see this going wrong at all or being abused by anyone ever, nope.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday May 06 2019, @12:15AM
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34423414 [bbc.co.uk]
There have been previous cases of self-transmitting programs that patch security vulnerabilities.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @08:29AM
this is funny. it's like kids on a trampoline, with green-camouflage helmets and padded vests, whacking eachother with soft-rubber clubs
and a big sign above it all reading "CYPHERWAR".
it's all useless, really, CPUs are bad, routers are bad and 95% of all desktop OSes are bad.
you want cyber war? you gotta make your own CPU, load them into a drum that hot-swaps 'em during execution, program your own OS and compilers, top to bottom.
measure the EM field with a MRI during development ... and MORE.
everything else is just plastic and PR and SPIN control via ... windows only enrichment ^_^