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A record 259 people were arrested nationwide last year for unauthorized access to online services, with young offenders dominating identity theft in cyberspace, police said.

This figure matches the previous year’s record and is the highest since the Law on Prohibition of Unauthorized Computer Access was enacted in 2000.

Nearly 70 percent of the suspects were in their teens and 20s, according to the National Police Agency’s announcement on March 13.

Of the total 259 suspects, 105 were in their 20s, 72 in their teens, 42 in their 30s, 18 in their 40s, 17 in their 50s and five in their 60s or older.

The suspects in their teens and 20s included 79 students.

Among the 307 incidents with suspects in their teens and 20s, one-third involved unauthorized access to social media accounts belonging to others.

In one high-profile case, three boys aged 14 to 16 were arrested by Tokyo police in February.

The boys allegedly used illegally obtained IDs and passwords to access Rakuten Mobile Inc.’s servers and make communication line contracts. They are accused of selling these illegally contracted lines for cryptocurrency.

Among unauthorized access cases by individuals in their teens and 20s, around 30 percent involved obtaining IDs and passwords by exploiting lax security management.

The NPA is urging people to avoid setting simple passwords or reusing passwords.

RANSOMWARE ATTACKS ON RISE

In a separate development, ransomware attacks, in which computer data is encrypted and a ransom is demanded, continue to be a serious threat in Japan.

Last year, there were 222 reported cases, an increase of 25 from the year before. This is the second-highest figure since statistics began being compiled in 2020.

Among the businesses and organizations that suffered ransomware attacks, less than 20 percent had a business continuity plan in place to minimize damage and maintain operations in the event of a cyberattack.

The NPA officials said that many companies have plans for natural disasters, but few are anticipating cyberattacks. Companies that took longer to recover incurred higher costs, they said.

The NPA emphasizes the importance of including measures in business continuity plans to preserve logs and other data to identify intrusion routes and other attack details.

While most companies back up their data, there have been many cases where the backups themselves were encrypted. Therefore, proactive measures, such as isolating backups from the network, are also effective, according to the NPA.

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