national
cyber
observation
center

About NOTICE

NOTICE (National Operation Towards IoT Clean Environment) is a national project by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to survey vulnerable IoT devices in Japan that may be abused in cyber attacks and to alert device users. The NOTICE project was launched on February 20, 2019.

The National Cyber Observation Center, as the organization responsible for surveying vulnerable IoT devices in the NOTICE project, conducts Internet-wide scans on IPv4 addresses allocated to Japan to search for IoT devices with weak ID/PW settings that may be abused in cyberattacks. In the survey, we enter several hundred ID/PW pairs (simple ID/PW pairs or those used in the default settings of commercially available IoT devices) into devices that allow login attempts from the Internet to check whether login is possible.
We provide ISPs with information on devices that have been successfully logged in the survey, as these devices are at risk of being compromised by attackers and abused in cyber-attacks. ISPs identify the users of the devices on the basis of the information and alert them to take countermeasures. Users who receive alerts from ISPs can reduce the risk of future damage by changing device settings and updating software with the help of the support center.