2026: The Year of AI-Assisted Attacks

On December 4, 2025, a 17-year-old was arrested in Osaka under Japan’s Unauthorized Access Prohibition Act. The young man had run malicious code to extract the personal data of over 7 million users of Kaikatsu Club, Japan's largest internet cafe chain. When asked, the young man shared his motivation for the hack: he wanted to buy Pokémon cards. In a sense, this is a fairly conventional story.