Why Japan will launch a massive hacking of 200 million devices

The National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies plans to check the vulnerability of products such as "routers", "webcams" and home appliances, said Tuesday a representative of the company. organization, Tsutomu Yoshida.

The Japanese government wants to strengthen cybersecurity before the country organizes important international events such as Rugby World Cup and G20 Summit (both in 2019) or the Games a year later.

Security in this area is all the more important as much of the organization and management of this type of event is now done through computer networks.

For this study, experts will test the vulnerability against hackers using common usernames and pbadwords but dangerous like "abcd", "1234" or "admin", knowing that many users do not care about changing the codes that the manufacturer has installed at the factory, Yoshida said.

The 200 million devices to be tested are mostly products connected by cables and not by Wi-Fi networks. Thus, smartphones will not be affected, although the security of Wi-Fi communications in public places may to be verified.

The study, which will not interfere with systems, will signal ISPs that their vulnerable users are being attacked.

Major world events face the growing threats of computer attacks.