Japan’s Foreign Ministry website downed by cyber attack

It looks like anti-Japanese groups recently launched denial of service attacks on Japan’s Foreign Ministry website, making it almost impossible to view yesterday:

TOKYO The Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Web site was slowed Tuesday, apparently by a massive number of access attempts from outside the ministry, an official said.

The Web site was not shut down, but Internet connections to it remained still “very slow” nearly 15 hours after the slowdown began early Tuesday morning, said Kenichi Kasahara of the Foreign Ministry’s information technology office.

Officials were investigating the cause of the problem, which may have been caused by a massive number of access attempts from outside the ministry, Kasahara said.

He said that no damage was done to information posted on the site, and that the ministry’s server was not bogged down.

Kasahara refused to speculate on whether any group may have deliberately caused the slowdown by making a large number of coordinated access attempts.

A similar problem occurred the ministry’s Web site on Sept. 1, 2005, making it difficult to get access to it for about 13 hours, Kasahara said. That incident was also blamed on a huge number of access attempts, but the ministry could not pin down its source, he said.

Last year, the Japanese government bolstered the defense of its computer systems following a surge of cyber-attacks believed linked to anti-Japanese sentiment in Asia. It increased staff and created a new agency to coordinate its efforts.

It’s great to see that opponents of Japan’s foreign policy are taking mature steps to make the Japanese government change its policies..