Recently, the Tokyo Police Department cracked a severe cyberattack case, in which a 15-year-old first-year high school student living in Saitama Prefecture's Sōtō City was arrested on suspicion of cybercrime. This incident has attracted widespread attention, not only because the suspect is very young, but also because he used generative AI tools to assist in carrying out the entire attack process.

Investigations revealed that the teenager accessed the animation streaming platform "BANDAI CHANNEL," owned by Bandai Namco, using another person's account in November 2025. After illegally entering the system, he created malicious programs to mass-delete 46,812 member accounts on the platform. Due to the large number of affected accounts, the platform had to suspend all its services.

During the attack, the teenager not only destroyed user accounts but also illegally obtained a large amount of personal sensitive information, including email addresses and usernames of victims. However, according to preliminary investigations by the investigators, the stolen information has not yet been used for other illegal purposes.

Facial police questioning, the teenager confessed to all criminal facts. Surprisingly, he clearly stated that he did not launch the attack due to any dissatisfaction with the platform operator. It seems that this action was more of a "test" of technical challenges. According to the investigators, the teenager began to be exposed to computers since the fourth grade of elementary school and has been self-studying related technologies for many years, eventually applying his accumulated knowledge to the wrong path.

At present, the Japanese police have not disclosed the specific details of the vulnerability exploited by the teenager to break into the system. This incident once again sounds the alarm for cybersecurity, revealing the potential risks of generative AI technology in lowering the threshold for cyberattacks. With the popularity of AI tools, how to effectively defend against such new types of attacks driven by technology has become a serious challenge that Internet companies need to face urgently.