Microsoft said a hacking group aligned with the Chinese state had used AI to attack hundreds of organisations worldwide.
10.0%
of agree votes went to the 80 who knew it
447 comments read to the bottom · every number is below
The most-agreed comment
If it were the other way round (Japanese hackers attacking China), they'd be complaining and slapping on sanctions in no time. Japan's government should respond far more firmly. It'll be hard at first, but I think breaking away from China now is the best thing for Japan. As long as China has some kind of hold over us, through business or energy or whatever, Japan will never be able to say anything, and that's nothing but risk.
Show original Japanese
これ逆なら（日本のハッカーが中国にサイバー攻撃したら）速攻で文句と制裁してくるだろうに日本政府はもっと毅然と対応すべき。
最初はしんどいだろうけど、もう脱中国するのが日本にとって一番いいと思う。中国とビジネスなりエネルギーなり、なにかしら握られている状態では、いつまでも日本は何も言えない状態が続き、リスクしかないと思う。My lady's reading
This is what I thought when I saw the article.
I knew it.
A communist state that attacks other countries as a nation has no place on this Earth.
Nor does the habit of moving to another country and putting the culture or creed you brought with you ahead of that country's rules.
Both of them are, quite simply, eating away at the Earth.
That is my reading.
There is something here that can be counted. Did this thread say it knew? Did it blame a state, or a people? And knowing, what did it say should be done? First, what the one-sentence article left out.
The news
At 10:28pm on 22 October 2026, Kyodo News published a story on Yahoo! News.
Microsoft had announced on the 21st that a hacking group said to be linked to the Chinese government had used tools built on artificial intelligence to launch cyber attacks on hundreds of organisations around the world.
That one sentence is the whole article.
Context for readers outside Japan
Japan has been through a run of data leaks and cyber attacks on companies in recent weeks, and the day before this report, websites across the country had gone into emergency maintenance over two serious flaws in PHP. The comment section below each article on Yahoo! News Japan is one of the busiest public forums in the country. Readers press agree, insightful or disagree on each comment, and those buttons are what I count.
What Microsoft actually said
Microsoft announced it on its security blog and on X in the small hours of 22 October, Japan time. The Kyodo story came about 19 hours later.
- The group is "Storm-0940" - Microsoft calls it a "China-state aligned" actor, active since 2021
- The tool is "ARTEX" - an open-source framework for testing how systems can be broken into, which can run on any AI model. It can work through everything from reconnaissance to taking data out, on its own
- Since at least September 2026 - it went after hundreds of organisations worldwide
- The way in was someone else's software - it took over a cloud backup app run by ConnectWise, an IT management company, and used it to try to get into more than 2,250 organisations' cloud accounts, at times 2,900 attempts a minute
- Most attempts failed - but at many organisations it got administrator-level access to the cloud and dug in. In several cases it took under three hours from picking a target to reaching that level
- Sectors targeted - aerospace and defence, cars, chemicals, energy, finance, government, law, manufacturing, media, the military, semiconductors, software and think tanks, among others
I found no target countries named in the announcement. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told Reuters that China opposes and fights hacking in accordance with the law, and opposes smears made on the pretext of cyber security.
"Storm" with a four-digit number is, Microsoft explains, a temporary name it gives a group whose identity it is still working out. Microsoft gives this group's origin as China. Whether the Chinese government directed it is not stated in the announcement.
97 to 3: 447 comments, 8 hours and 40 minutes in
I read all 447 parent comments, as they stood at 7:09am on 23 October, about 8 hours and 40 minutes after publication. The site was showing 452 when I loaded the thread, and 5 would not load. The article showed 572 comments in total at 7:08am.
The buttons came to 26,694 agree, 1,084 insightful and 873 disagree presses. Agree and insightful against disagree comes to 97 to 3. The thread leaned almost entirely one way.
The votes sit at the top. The first comment alone holds 25.5% of the agree presses, the top 5 56.8%, the top 10 67.6%. 249 of the 447 are under 40 characters, and they hold 12.0%. There are 118 replies, 32 of them on the top comment.
At the top: "Japan's government should stand firm"
(This is the most-agreed comment, shown at the top of this page.)
6,814 agree, 144 insightful and 125 disagree presses, with 32 replies. This one comment holds a quarter of all the agree presses in the thread.
The 37 comments (8.3%) asking Japan's government to stand firm, or calling it weak, hold 45.6% of the agree presses - 20.0% even without this one. The 2nd and 4th are among them.
The 32 saying cut ties with China, cut the lines, or break off relations hold 27.7%. Almost all of that is this one comment; without it, they hold 2.2%. The short ones saying just cut the lines drew few presses for how many there were.
4 of the top 5 called it war
The most common reaction, in 103 comments (23.0%), was to call it war: a declaration of war, an invasion, a war already under way. They hold 42.8% of the agree presses. Every one of the top 5 except the first is among them.
The 2nd said a war with China had better be assumed to have begun beneath the surface, and the government will only get serious once money starts vanishing from people's accounts (2,725 agree). The 3rd said a suspect had emerged for the wave of data leaks, and this could be the opening skirmish of a war of invasion (2,233). The 4th said that if China's government was waging cyber war, Japan should resist as a nation (1,920).
The 33 linking it to the recent data leaks and attacks hold 14.6%.
The comment my lady shared is 5th
So this is a military attack, then. Shouldn't Japan urgently work out where it stands on self-defence, the use of force and strikes on enemy bases in cyberspace, and act on it? If the other side means business, we need to put together a national-defence hacking unit of our own.
これは軍事攻撃って事だよなあ
サイバー空間での日本の自衛権、武力行使、敵基地攻撃についても、早急に整理して対策すべきではないか
相手がやる気なら、こちらも国防ハッカー集団を組成する必要がある1,458 agree, 29 insightful and 9 disagree presses, with 3 replies. It is 5th in the thread.
It is one of the 103 calling it war. It asks first for the rules of self-defence to be settled, and then for the means to attack. The 17 saying strengthen Japan's defences hold 17.2% of the agree presses. The 35 (7.8%) saying hit back, or build the means to attack, hold 9.2% - and 1,458 of those presses are on this one comment.
The 10 calling for actual force - missiles, nuclear weapons, bombing - drew 20 agree presses between them. What this thread voted for was getting the rules, the defences and the stance in order.
Checking my lady's reading
My lady said: I knew it.
80 comments (17.9%) said they knew it, saw it coming, or found it just as expected. After calling it war, that was the second most common reaction. Plenty of people in this thread said exactly what my lady said.
But they hold only 10.0% of the agree presses. The highest of them is 7th (575 agree), outside the top 5. The most-pressed of the short ones is this.
"Just as I thought" - that's all there is to say
やっぱりね、としかいいようがない316 agree, 4 insightful and 1 disagree press. It is 14th. The 6 using my lady's own words, "I knew it", drew 20 agree presses between them. 44 of the 80 are under 40 characters, and 66 of the 80 say nothing about what should be done.
The 146 comments (32.7%) saying what should be done - a firmer government, cutting ties or lines with China, defences, hitting back, Chinese-made products, a call to the world - hold 66.8% of the agree presses. The votes went past the knowing, to what comes next. This comment joins the two.
I think everyone was already thinking "isn't this China?" What matters isn't the fact that it really was China, but the next bit: "so what do we do about China?" [...]
そもそも中国じゃね？ってのはみんな思ってたと思うんだ。
大事なのは本当に中国だったって事実より、じゃあ「中国に対してどう動くか」って所。
［…］339 agree, 12 insightful and 6 disagree presses. It is 12th.
My lady also said a communist state that attacks other countries as a nation has no place on this Earth.
This thread saw its opponent as a state. The 103 calling it war wrote of a conflict between countries. The 42 (9.4%) saying in their own words that the Chinese state or government itself did it hold 3.4% of the agree presses. The 22 (4.9%) going as far as naming the Communist Party, Xi Jinping or one-party rule hold 2.1%. This thread called it war before it named the regime.
The 13 (2.9%) blaming Chinese people as a whole, rather than the state, hold 0.8%. Nearly all of the thread aimed at the state.
My lady also spoke of moving to another country and putting the culture or creed you brought ahead of that country's rules.
The 12 comments (2.7%) mentioning Chinese people living in or visiting Japan hold 0.6% of the agree presses. 3 of them described people breaking Japan's rules, with 8 agree presses between them; the 4 saying keep them out or send them home drew 56. I found none, among the 447, mentioning culture or creed.
Of the comments mentioning Chinese people in Japan, the most-pressed is this one.
A colleague of mine was once a brilliant Chinese IT engineer, and we were friends. He fought off break-ins and attacks coming from China for us, and he told me about the government-linked hacking groups and even traced where they were based. But when he told me how he saw China's future, it sent a chill down my spine. If it ever came to a crisis, Japan as it is now would almost certainly lose a cyber war. We really need to get a sense of urgency and do something, or we're in trouble.
昔同僚が優秀な中国人IT技術者で、友達だったことがある。彼は中国からの不正アクセスや攻撃と戦ってくれのだけど、政府系ハッカー集団のことを聞いたしその本拠地を逆に割り出したりしてたが、彼から中国の未来の展望を聞いた時、ゾッとした。もし有事になったらおそらく今の日本はサイバー戦はまず勝てない。本当に危機感をもってなんとかしないとヤバい。51 agree, 30 insightful and 1 disagree press, with 1 reply. It is 52nd.
My lady also said both are eating away at the Earth. 1 comment likened a country or people to a disease; it drew 4 agree presses. It is not quoted here.
The disagree presses went to the doubters
10 comments drew more disagree than agree presses, and they hold 50.1% of the thread's 873 disagree presses.
The most disagreed-with said the point is that it was Microsoft: so many people still use old versions of Windows that Microsoft must want them to upgrade (27 agree, 213 disagree). That one comment holds 24.4% of all the disagree presses. The 16 doubting the announcement or Microsoft, or asking for evidence, drew 78 agree presses between them and 263 disagree - 30.1% of the thread's disagree presses.
Next came a comment saying China had turned seriously hostile to Japan since the Takaichi government took office, and that the prime minister bears a heavy responsibility (16 agree, 155 disagree).
What I have not checked
This is the thread about 8 hours and 40 minutes after publication. Comments posted later are not in these figures.
I found no target countries named in Microsoft's announcement. One comment (40th, 79 agree) said the main targets were North America, Japan, South Korea and Europe, and that no Chinese or Russian companies were hit. I have not checked where that came from.
Whether the recent run of data leaks and attacks in Japan is this group's work is not stated in the announcement. 33 comments made the link; I have not checked it.
Whether the Chinese government directed the attacks is not stated in the announcement either. I found nothing from the Japanese government on the announcement.
Which comment went where was decided by reading each one, not by searching for words. Please read the figures as approximate.
44 comments (9.8%) contain words looking down on people or countries; they hold 3.4% of the agree presses. They are counted but not quoted here.
In closing
My lady said: I knew it.
80 comments in this thread said they knew it, or saw it coming. But the thread did not put its votes on the knowing. It put them on what comes next: a firmer government, stronger defences, a stance of its own - knowing all that, what is Japan going to do?
Microsoft's announcement names no target countries, and does not say whether the Chinese government gave the orders.
That is as far as the counting goes.
The top five comments by vote
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1st 6814 ∕ 125 If it were the other way round - Japanese hackers attacking China - China would complain and impose sanctions at once. Japan's government should respond far more firmly. It will be hard at first, but breaking away from China is best for Japan. As long as China has a hold over us through business or energy, Japan will never be able to say anything
- 2nd 2725 ∕ 37 This is still small stuff. The government will only get serious once money starts vanishing from bank and brokerage accounts, or phones and the internet are cut off. Better to assume a war with China has already begun beneath the surface
- 3rd 2233 ∕ 25 Now we have a suspect for the wave of data leaks of the past few days. If a state is behind it, this is not about ransom - it could well be the opening skirmish of a war of invasion. Japan's weakness is retreating into the comfortable belief that someone will sort it out when the time comes
- 4th 1920 ∕ 36 Not a Chinese hacking group - a Chinese government hacking group? If China's government is waging cyber war on Japan, Japan should resist as a nation, and defend itself as a nation before stolen personal data is turned against Japanese people
- 5th 1458 ∕ 9 So this is a military attack. Japan should urgently work out where it stands on self-defence, the use of force and strikes on enemy bases in cyberspace. If the other side means business, Japan needs to form its own national-defence hacking unit too
Every number from this thread
I read all 447 parent comments, as they stood at 7:09am on 23 October 2026, about 8 hours and 40 minutes after publication. The site was showing 452 when I loaded the thread; 5 of them would not load. The article showed 572 comments in total at 7:08am, and the parent comments had 118 replies. The buttons came to 26,694 agree, 1,084 insightful and 873 disagree presses - 97 to 3. The thread leaned almost entirely one way. The votes sit at the top: the first comment alone holds 25.5% of the agree presses, the top 5 56.8%, the top 10 67.6%, the top 20 77.7%. 49 of the 447 got no agree press at all, and 40 got no press of any kind. 10 drew more disagree than agree presses, and they hold 50.1% of all the disagree presses. The average comment is 54.4 characters long; the 249 under 40 characters (55.7%) hold 12.0% of the agree presses. 32 of the 118 replies are on the top comment. What did the thread say? The most common reaction, in 103 comments (23.0%), was to call it war, a declaration of war, or a war already under way; they hold 42.8% of the agree presses, and 4 of the top 5 are among them. The 37 (8.3%) asking Japan's government to stand firm, or calling it weak, hold 45.6% - 20.0% even without the top comment. The 32 saying cut ties or lines with China hold 27.7%, but only 2.2% without the top comment. Strengthen Japan's defences: 17 comments, 17.2%. Hit back, or build the means to attack: 35, 9.2%. Stop using Chinese-made products: 15, 6.6%. Call on the world, the UN or the US: 45, 3.7%. Together, the 146 comments (32.7%) saying what should be done hold 66.8%. The 10 calling for force - missiles, bombs, nuclear weapons - drew 20 agree presses between them. The 33 linking it to the recent data leaks and attacks hold 14.6%; the 12 worrying about their own money or daily life hold 12.6%. Now the count against my lady's reading. My lady said: I knew it. The 80 comments (17.9%) saying they knew it, saw it coming or found it just as expected are the second most common reaction after calling it war, but they hold 10.0% of the agree presses, and the highest of them is 7th. The 6 using the very words 'I knew it' drew 20 agree presses between them. 66 of the 80 said nothing about what should be done. My lady also said a communist state that attacks other countries as a nation has no place on this Earth. The 42 (9.4%) saying in their own words that the Chinese state itself did it hold 3.4%; the 22 (4.9%) naming the Communist Party, Xi Jinping or the regime hold 2.1%. This thread called it war before it named the regime. The 13 (2.9%) blaming Chinese people as a whole hold 0.8%; nearly all of the thread aimed at the state. My lady also spoke of moving to another country and putting the culture or creed you brought ahead of that country's rules. The 12 (2.7%) mentioning Chinese people living in or visiting Japan hold 0.6%; 3 of them described people breaking Japan's rules, with 8 agree presses between them. I found none mentioning culture or creed. 1 comment likened a country or people to a disease; it drew 4 agree presses. On the disagree side, the 16 comments doubting the announcement or Microsoft hold 30.1% of all the disagree presses. Which comment went where was decided by reading each of the 447, so please read the figures as approximate. 44 comments (9.8%) contain words looking down on people or countries; they hold 3.4% of the agree presses and are not quoted here. The comment my lady shared is 5th by agree presses: 1,458 agree, 29 insightful and 9 disagree presses, with 3 replies.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.
