Japan is currently grappling with a string of personal data leak incidents.

While cases of leaked personal information centered around private companies—such as travel booking services, secondhand trading platforms, and convenience stores—have surpassed 40 million this month, the damage is now expanding to public services and medical fields.

This is a brokerage site that allows people to receive local specialties as return gifts when they donate to the hometown tax program.

Upon accessing the site, a notice appears stating, "Services are temporarily suspended while we conduct an investigation."

The service was provisionally suspended after traces of hacking were discovered.

[Site User: It is scary. There have been a lot of (hacking incidents) lately. There is so much information to input, like credit card and account details....]

A fertility clinic in Tokyo.

The operation of the reception terminal has been halted, and staff are manually handling check-ins one by one.

[Hospital Staff: The work of having staff check each registration form and call patients has increased, making it very inefficient.]

The system for calling patients for consultations has also been shut down, so staff have to call out patients' names directly.

[Hospital Staff: Patient with consultation card number 00, please come in.]

"Atlink," a service used by this hospital for reservations and check-ins, was hacked, prompting the suspension of all related services to prevent further damage.

It has been raised that information from up to 787 medical institutions using this service may have been leaked.

Amid the spreading damage, survey results showed that a Chinese-made AI penetration testing tool called "Artex" was utilized in some of the attacks.

An information security subsidiary of Japan's IT firm GMO Internet Group identified and analyzed six servers used in attacks against Japanese companies over the past month, finding that traces of Artex were present in all of them.

Artex automatically detects system vulnerabilities through the coordination of multiple AI agents. It was recently used in hacking incidents targeting South Korean financial institutions, leading to controversy and the subsequent suspension of its public release.

While it has not been determined whether the attack perpetrators are from China, vigilance against hacks originating from China is growing.

The Japanese government plans to recommend starting next year that financial and medical institutions handling sensitive personal information use government-certified data centers, which Japanese media outlets have interpreted as a measure to effectively exclude Chinese firms.

(Reported by Mun Junmo | Camera by Moon Hyun-jin | Video Editing by Kim Jong-tae | Produced by SBS Digital News)