Kawasaki City: login attempts on the Fureai Net booking system made the city stop baseball field bookings

1. 2020-07-07

   From this day to July 9, a third party tried to log in, mainly to accounts of baseball field users, and account after account was locked. Users' calls brought the problem to light. [1]

2. 2020-07-10

   The city disclosed the case. Saying it could no longer keep bookings fair, it stopped taking baseball field bookings from August and lottery entries from September, and consulted the police. [1]

Baseball field users could not book through the system. Bookings for other facilities continued. The city said no leak of personal data had been confirmed. [1]

From August 1 the city took baseball field bookings through a web form, but it received about 90,000 entries in August and over 150,000 in September. A check of some September entries found 20,260 in 24 hours from one IP address using several registration numbers. The entries looked automated, but any link to the July login attempts was unknown. [2]

Fearing disruption to its other web forms, the city stopped taking entries through the form and switched to paper applications by post or in person. [2]

On November 18 the city filed a criminal complaint with Kawasaki police, against unknown suspects, for obstruction of business by deceit over about 445,000 failed login attempts on about 1,300 accounts on July 7. The police accepted it. The city said it would take no legal action over the flood of entries to the booking form. [3]