Japanese government slams Mitsubishi for not disclosing a cyber attack

THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT has warned its largest weapons supplier, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that it might have breached multi-billion dollar supply contracts by not revealing a hacking incident sooner.

The attack, which involved several types of data-stealing malware on Mitsubishi computers, occured in August, but Japan's Ministry of Defence only found out about it from press reports yesterday.

It seems that either Mitsubishi Heavy Industries did not think the attack was severe enough to warrant a report or it did not want the negative publicity that would be associated with such disclosure. We would have imagined it would have learned from Sony's delay in reporting its own hacking incidents and how that affected the company earlier this year.

"It's up to the defense ministry to decide whether or not the information is important. That is not for Mitsubishi Heavy to decide. A report should have been made," a Ministry of Defence spokesperson told Reuters, showing the strained relationship between the government and the company.

The Ministry also ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch a thorough investigation of the hacking incident, which it seems not to have done to date, raising serious security concerns about a company that makes fighter jets and missile systems, in addition to other weaponry.

Should the probe find that sensitive data was leaked, the Ministry of Defence will likely impose penalties on the company, including fines and the possible withdrawal of some or all of the over 200 government contracts it secured last year, which won't go down well considering a tenth of its income comes from the domestic weapons sector.

The problem for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is that it was already the victim of previous hacking incidents in 2003 and 2006, when details of fighter jets and nuclear reactor tests were stolen. This could be the last straw for the Japanese government, particularly with growing concern about cyber espionage over recent months.

China has come under fire as a likely candidate for the hacking, but the Chinese government has denied it was involved, claiming it is also a regular victim of hacking, which it claims it consistently opposes. µ