- In addition, as conflicts arise over international rules and other matters concerning cyberspace, some states are asserting that national governments should strengthen management and control of cyberspace. If this becomes the mainstream for international rules, it may become an obstacle to ensuring “a free, fair and secure cyberspace” that underpin Japan’s national security and principles to be followed. - As national security has been expanding its scope to economic and technological fields, the struggle for technological supremacy is emerging, and some states are stepping up collection, management, and control of data. - Moreover, as the supply chains for systems comprising cyberspace become increasingly complex and globalized, the risk of malicious functions, etc. getting embedded in products somewhere along the supply chain is arising. Similarly, risks related to the reliability and stable supply of cyberspace itself (i.e., supply chain risks), including disrupted supply of devices and services due to the state of political and economic affairs, are emerging as well. - In this way, more and more organizations and individuals are becoming exposed to threats, and the means of cyberattacks are becoming organized and sophisticated, which undermine the stability of cyberspace. This situation has emerged as a common and urgent issue for the international community that is extremely challenging to solve for each stakeholder and state alone, putting at risk Japan’s aim of ensuring “a free, fair and secure cyberspace” on a global level. 3. 1. 3 Recent trends of threats in cyberspace - Such trends are evident from observing recent stream of threats in cyberspace. - Many attacks suspected of involvement of crime organizations or states are taking place. Overseas, attacks targeting elections and other forms of interference with democratic processes and large-scale attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in supply chains, are prevalent. - Moreover, the popularization of remote working has led to increased cases of network intrusions via individual devices or through exploitation of vulnerabilities in VPN devices, and cases in which cloud services become targets of attack. In fact, cyberattacks that take advantage of current environmental changes have been observed, including those that target vulnerabilities created in the pandemic and attacks via overseas branches in line with globalization. - In addition, Advanced Persistent Threat are continuing to do damage, as evidenced by the fact that indiscriminate attacks rapidly increased in 2020. Existing threats are also becoming more complicated and sophisticated, as can be seen in “double extortion” ransomware attacks that request money in return for restoring data and stopping the disclosure of stolen data. As background to this, it is pointed out that an ecosystem has become established to enable the provision of malware and collection of ransom to be carried out in a systematic manner, so that those with malicious intent can easily launch an attack even if they do not have sophisticated skills. 8