The National Police Agency (NPA) announced yesterday that it will make efforts to communicate with ethical hackers, known in Internet slang as White Hats, in order to better fight against the growing number of cybercrimes and cyber-attacks in all of Japan. It hopes to gather more information on said crimes, which includes the releases of viruses that targets and controls infected computers. Although individual police investigators have made connections with some hackers, this is the first organized effort that the NPA has made to reach out to these hacking experts.
The NPA will also take into consideration close relationships and communications with private companies and universities involved in the communications field. The commissioning of cybercrime and cyber–attack analyses to the private sector is also being discussed. This shows Japan’s seriousness in battling these kinds of crimes. It will be remembered that in the latter part of last year, the government announced that it, with cooperation of other ASEAN members, was planning to develop a cyberdefense network and a defense force. This latest move could be the beginning of it all.
The NPA also added that it will encourage companies to develop its own measures that would prevent personal information from being obtained through applications in smartphones. This takes us back to October last year when the police arrested five people for their involvement in the creation of a virus embedded in smartphone apps. This act resulted in the theft of roughly 10 million pieces of personal information.
[via ZDNet]