TOKYO: A growing number of cyberattacks targeted remote control systems used for teleworking in Japan in 2019, the National Police Agency said Thursday.

The situation involving cyberattacks remains serious, the agency said.

The average daily number of unauthorized accesses that were detected by police and suspected of having a link to cyberattacks in 2019 jumped 52 pct from the previous year to 4,192 per Internet Protocol address.

Of the accesses, mostly from overseas, 18.7 pct were made from Russia, 17 pct from the Netherlands, 13.9 pct from the United States and 12.5 pct from China.

The number of unauthorized accesses to a remote control service offered by U.S. information technology giant Microsoft Corp. for personal computers increased between January and May last year, reaching up to some 50,000 a day. Microsoft released software to correct the problem in May that year.

There were 5,301 targeted email attacks, in which emails in the disguise of business messages prompt recipients to open attached files that infect their computers with malicious programs and steal information.

Japan saw a surge in the number of remittance fraud involving internet banking, with the total damage amount soaring by over 2 billion yen to some 2,521 million yen.

In January this year, Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said confidential corporate information may have been compromised due to a cyberattack.

While expressing concerns over cyberattacks targeting this summer's Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, the NPA said it will make all-out efforts to ensure that the events will be held safely and smoothly by cooperating with related institutions.

JIJI Press