The Japanese Ministry of Defense will create cyberweapons in the form of malware that it intends to use when it needs to defend its enemies.
Once created, these malware strains, consisting of viruses and backdoors, will become Japan's first cyberweapons, according to Japanese media outlets that reported the news earlier this week, citing a government source.
The malware is expected to be completed by the end of the year and will be created by contractors rather than government employees, a confirmed source appears to have told ZDNet.
There is no official data available on the malware's capabilities or the exact scenarios in which the government intends to use it, although a chart released by the government suggests that the malware will only be used when Japanese institutions are attacked, and only by the attacker.
The news comes as the Japanese military expands and modernizes to keep up with the modern era and counter China's growing military threat in the region.
As part of this modernization effort, the Japanese government plans to expand its reach into “cyberspace,” with NATO recognizing cyberspace as an official battlefield in June 2016.
Japan is one of several countries recently to acknowledge that it possesses and develops cyberweapons. The others are the US, the UK and Germany.
Israel, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are countries that possess, develop and deploy offensive cyberweapons, but have not yet officially acknowledged this.
Tokyo government sources told local media that they hope that simply having a cyber weapon in their possession will deter those who want to attack the country.
This is the second time the Japanese government has attempted to create a cyber arsenal after a previous attempt that did not yield the expected results, when in 2012 it created “search and destroy” malware.
Nevertheless, the Japanese government seems to have plans to strengthen its cyber capabilities and its ability to respond to cyber attacks.
Earlier this year, the government passed legislation allowing employees of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to hack into citizens' IoT devices using default or weak credentials, as part of an unprecedented investigation into insecure IoT devices.
The plan is to create a list of insecure devices that use default or easy passwords and forward them to authorities and relevant internet service providers so they can take steps to warn consumers and secure devices.
This plan was put into motion to secure IoT devices ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and avoid attacks.
Somehow, all of these plans come from Japan's new Cybersecurity Department, a division of the Defense Ministry. Yoshitaka Sakurada, head of Japan's Government Security Department, was heavily criticized and ridiculed last year when he publicly admitted that he doesn't own, use, or know much about computers.
