Japan's Cabinet Office: 60,000+ Newsletter Emails Leaked in Arara Breach

Fourteen newsletters affected

The incident touches 14 newsletters. The largest is the Cabinet Office Public Interest Corporation newsletter, which offers information useful for running public interest corporations, with 19,685 addresses leaked. Next is the Food Safety Commission e-magazine, covering food safety, with 10,922 addresses. The notice from the Public-Private Personnel Exchange Center, which supports re-employment of national civil servants and public-private talent exchange, accounts for 5,400.

Some newsletters asked subscribers for attributes such as purpose of use, name, affiliation and gender at registration, and that information may have been leaked as well.

The Cabinet Office urged recipients to be wary of emails impersonating the office, related ministries or real companies, and of any message asking for passwords or other credentials, or credit card information.

Part of a much larger incident

On November 6, Arara said the leaked email addresses of its service, Arara Message, total 81,329,467 after removing duplicates, and that up to about 380 contracted companies could be affected. Arara Message has been suspended, and the Cabinet Office has also halted delivery of the newsletters concerned.

The case adds the Cabinet Office to a growing list of organizations that have disclosed leaks linked to the same service provider.