Next month, the government in Japan is going to start hacking into internetconnected devices in homes and offices around the country. The program could last up to five year.
Leading up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the country wants to improve cyber security measures, Technology Review reports.
Starting in a few weeks, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) will begin using default passwords and decoding dictionaries to attempt to hack into about 200 million devices. The Institute will begin with webcams and routers.
If access is gained to the device, the owner will be contacted and advised to improve their security measures, though they won’t be forced to.
No word on what the Institute will do with information, if any is found, once devices are hacked. Concerns have been raised as to whether or not it’s safe to create such a big database of devices that already lack strong security because the database could be ripe for hackers itself.
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