TOKYO - The personal information of officers and other employees at 22 prefectural police forces in Japan may have leaked following a recent data breach at disaster information services firm Arcadia Inc., National Police Agency officials said Wednesday.
The possible leak affecting nearly half of the country's 47 prefectural police forces comes amid a string of similar incidents at Japanese companies in various industries.
The potentially exposed data include about 125,000 records such as names and email addresses of police officers and other employees at 20 prefectural police forces.
Among the police forces, Kyoto and Fukuoka police as well as those in Shimane and Yamaguchi suffered leaks of about 16,000 email addresses of residents registered for security alert services.
No investigative information was leaked, the agency said.
Meanwhile, IwaiCosmo Securities Co. said the same day a cyberattack on a contracted company's computer system, which processes the Osaka-based brokerage firm's trading orders, resulted in the execution of unauthorized orders in seven customer accounts.
The attack on Oct. 14 targeted the system run and maintained by Trade Works Co., based in Tokyo, but did not involve account hijacking.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said in a press conference that the Financial Services Agency has requested IwaiCosmo to analyze the break-in and formulate preventive measures.
The brokerage said the affected accounts have been restored to their state before the unauthorized orders.
The cyberattack, believed to be carried out with the use of artificial intelligence, also resulted in the exposure of 4,975 customers' names and email addresses, but transaction passwords were not stolen, it said.
Earlier in the day, Recruit Co. revealed a possible leak of personal information involving 3.7 million accounts for its Carsensor used car information service.
The potential leak includes names and addresses, including those of used car dealership representatives, but not credit card payment information. No misuse has been confirmed so far.
Recruit detected suspicious external access to its systems on Saturday and determined the number of potentially leaked personal records on Tuesday.
The incident led to suspensions of used car information services of Nissan Motor Co., Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. relying on Recruit's system.
Aeon Co. said Wednesday it has detected external unauthorized access to some websites operated by group companies, leaving 13 unavailable during security-related system maintenance.
The Japanese retail giant said systems related to business operations and e-commerce sites have not been affected, and it is investigating whether any personal information has been leaked.
