TOKYO - An 18-year-old man from Tokyo has been arrested for allegedly obtaining personal information on over 7 million members of a major internet cafe through artificial intelligence-aided cyberattacks, police said Thursday.
The man, a high school student at the time of the crime, is suspected of conspiring with others to access the server of Kaikatsu Frontier Inc. without authorization and export information on around 7.24 million users between Jan. 18 and 20 in 2025.
He is also suspected of obstructing the operator's business as its app was temporarily halted after 183 instances of unauthorized access to the server to extract the data, according to the police.
The man partially denied the allegations, saying that he did not obstruct the operator's business.
Police arrested an 18-year-old high school student in Osaka last December on the same charges as the Tokyo man. He allegedly developed the AI-generated program that was used in the cyberattacks.
In May, a case involving a 19-year-old unemployed man from Tokyo, suspected of obstructing the cafe operator's business, was sent to prosecutors without arrest.
The three used social media to communicate information on the cyberattacks and share the exported membership data. The police are investigating whether a male sixth grader, also part of the group, was involved.
