Japanese government plans to discover the insecure IoT devices of its citizens

Japanese Government approved allowing the NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) officials to try to log into citizens’ and business’ IoT devices. The goal is to get a list of insecure IoT devices to avoid, with the help of the authorities and the ISPs, attacks during the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics event.

The approved survey, which consists on running penetration tests with passwords by default or easy to guess, is planned to be launched in February 2019 over 200 devices, starting with routers and webcams, including home and business devices.
This measure has not been well received among citizens who doubt its effectiveness, as it does not guarantee that notified users will change their passwords or will have enough knowledge to adequately protect them.