The Japanese government will set up a professional hacker organisation to respond to AI-based cyberattacks. It aims to build a proactive security system that finds weaknesses in corporate systems from a hacker’s perspective and fixes them in advance.

According to Japanese media outlet ITmedia, Ryosei Akazawa (아카자와 료세이), the minister of economy, trade and industry, said at a news conference after a cabinet meeting on Oct. 23 that a dedicated white hacker team would be launched in November.

The new organisation will be installed at the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA), an independent administrative institution overseen by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and others. It will gather security experts familiar with cyberattack and defence techniques and continuously check system vulnerabilities at companies and institutions.

The core will be AI-based simulated hacking. It will conduct penetration tests that attempt to break into systems from a real hacker’s viewpoint, identify security weaknesses and prepare countermeasures before they are exploited.

Akazawa raised the possibility that hackers may be abusing AI to search broadly for vulnerabilities in recent unauthorised access cases. "Hackers can succeed in breaking in if they find just one vulnerability, but the defending side has to protect the entire system," he said, pointing to limits in the existing defence-centred approach. "We must also use high-performance AI for defence to find vulnerabilities and take action before hackers do," he added. He said the policy was to secure elite security personnel who also understand attack techniques.

In Japan, security concerns have recently grown after a critical vulnerability was found in PHP, a programming language widely used in web development, that could lead to remote code execution.

On Oct. 22, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry worked with the National Cybersecurity Strategy Headquarters (NCO) to send an alert to about 1,000 industry groups. IPA also recommended applying security updates related to the vulnerability quickly.

The Japanese government will also move to strengthen the security capabilities of small and medium-sized companies. It plans to expand a cybersecurity support programme and introduce a supply chain security measures evaluation system from March 2027.

Details including staffing, budget and scope of activities for the white hacker organisation have not yet been disclosed. Attention is focused on how effectively the Japanese government will build an active vulnerability detection system to counter AI-based attacks.