Japan seeks cyber warfare capability

Discussions are under way to decide if Japan should have the ability to counter cyberattacks by a foreign nation, according to a government source. This would include being able to attack a server in self-defense if government computer systems were attacked, the source said. Japan is looking for deterrents to cyberattacks, which have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, the source said, adding the government plans to cooperate with the United States, which has sophisticated counterattack technology. The government plans to set up a "cyberdefense task force" within the Self-Defense Forces next March, (The Japan Times) quoted the source as saying. The Defense Ministry and other government agencies have begun compiling concrete measures to wage a counterattack, the source said. As one technique, they are considering waging distributed denial-of-service attacks that send huge amounts of data to offending servers, the source said. For this, a senior defense official said, US cooperation is indispensable because identifying the source of a cyberattack requires very sophisticated computer technology.