A record 54.51 billion cyberattacks were detected in 2015 — double the number of the previous year — as hackers took control of security cameras and other devices, a survey by a government-backed institute says.
The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) used around 280,000 sensors to detect the cyberattacks, it said Saturday. These included those aimed at remotely controlling systems connected to the Internet and checking the vulnerability of server software.
IP addresses traced to China accounted for the bulk of the intrusions at 30 percent, while 20 percent were found to originate from the United States.
NICT began its cyberattack survey in 2005, when it logged about 310 million incidents. That had skyrocketed to about 5.65 billion by 2010, before more than doubled to 12.88 billion by 2013. Roughly 25.66 billion cases were detected last year.
Daisuke Inoue, a NICT official, also noted the rising risk of cyberattacks directed at gadgets capitalizing on the Internet of Things, an effort to create a network that allows everything from home appliances to smartphones and wearable devices to be controlled remotely and collect and exchange data. Inoue said bolstering defenses against such attacks is critical as the technology becomes more and more common in households.