Day: March 25, 2018

Written by Romeo Jung.

Introduction

Unit 731 was a secret Biological and Chemical Warfare Unit that Imperial Japan had established during the World War II. Eager to win the war, the scientists involved committed a lot of inhumane crimes like vivisection to Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Mongolian prisoners of war, and used the data gained to harm many Chinese civilians. This essay details heavily on the biological research and its data from start to the end as well as their impacts and aftermath.

Background

Unit 731 was established first in 1932 as a small group of five scientists interested in biological weapons, and was expanded around 1936 when Shiro Ishii was given full command of the unit. Given alternative names like “lumber yard” and “Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army”, the name “Unit 731” was made formal in 1941. The lab was based at the Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory in Japanese Army Military Medical School in Tokyo. Their purpose was none of the given names, but biological and chemical warfare research.

The idea of Unit 731 first circulated around by a memo written in April 23, 1936, that speaks about the establishment of reinforcement military forces in Manchuria. The memo states that there would be a new “Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention Department” and that it shall be expanded later on. 

The headquarters was set in three square kilometers of land in Pingfang district, Manchuria. Many of the lab’s buildings inside were hidden by a tall wall and high voltage wired fences. The lab had around 150 buildings, including incinerator, housing for prisoners, an animal house, and air field. The buildings were completely isolated from the outside world, with only a tunnel as the entrance.

Unit 731, along with two other units to be mentioned later, was created in opposition to the Geneva protocol of 1925 banning biological and chemical warfare. This protocol was signed at June 17, 1925 in Geneva. It became effective from February 8th, 1928, and got registered by League of Nations Treaty Series on September 7, 1929.

Divisions

Within Unit 731, there were eight subunits designed to focus on different topics of warfare. The first division focused on biological weapons like bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, and tuberculosis, with human subjects to work with. The second division focused on effectively spreading the biological weapons covered in the first division. The third division was focused on a specific way of spreading biological agents by bomb, the fourth on bacteria mass production and storage. The fifth through eighth divisions were mostly focused on the supplying the rest of the Unit, which included training workers, providing equipment, and overall administrative units.

Outside of Unit 731, Japan established two departments: Unit 100 and Unit 516. Unit 100 was first declared as the “Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop,” which focused on developing biological weapons aside from Unit 731. “Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department”, later called Unit 516, was also established for more research that focused on chemical weapons. 

People Involved

There were many involved with the research of Unit 731, most of them remaining anonymous to this day. Shiro Ishii was the Chief of Unit 731, with Masaji Kitano as second in command. Other scientists were most likely to be a Professor at an university or a chief of a medical research unit, like Dr. Hisato Yoshimura, who directed the frostbite experiments on subjects, and Dr. Hideo Futaki, who lead the tuberculosis research squad and some vivisections. Other personnels include Lieutenant Shunichi Suzuki, who, after the trials, went to work as the Governor of Tokyo, and Amitani Shogo, who remained at the lab afterwards and received the Asahi Prize for outstanding scientific performance.

Shiro Ishii served in the Imperial Japanese Army from 1921 to 1945, and in the meantime, he was a Japanese army medical officer, microbiologist, and the director of Unit 731. Before serving in the army, he had studied medicine at Kyoto Imperial University. He was first assigned as an army surgeon, then to the First Army Hospital and Army Medical School in Tokyo. His work soon impressed the superiors, which earned him postgraduate level medical education. Ishii was promoted to an army surgeon in 1925, and was advocating for a biological weapons research program.

After getting promoted to higher ranks, Ishii began his experiments in Zhongma Fortress for biological weapons. Then the government granted him permission to set up Unit 731 in his hopes of digging deeper into the topic. After World War II, he was arrested for a short time by the US occupation authorities for Unit 731, then received immunity from consequences in exchange for data. There are different accounts as to what he did after that, but some say that he traveled around to give talks about biological weapons and others say that he stayed in Japan to provide medical services for free.

What They Did

In Unit 731, the first division conducted many outrageous experiments which were violating human rights. They conducted many experiments that tested the limitations of the human body. The prisoners, used as subjects, were of mixed ethnicity and gender, some pregnant, and some as young as three years old. The prisoners, tied to stakes, would have to endure the biological agent bombs that carried plague infested fleas on them or rats with the diseases. Then they were subject to their body being cut open with a scalpel and examined while they were screaming for mercy on the table. 

An unnamed Unit 731 surgeon, in an interview with New York Times, described his experience with the unit. His first vivisection, which he recalled that he “cut [the prisoner] open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony… …finally he stopped. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons…” (Kristof) There was no use of anesthetics during vivisections at all because they were afraid that it would have an effect on the results and data.

In another part of his article, Kristof interviews a former medical worker in Unit 731, Takeo Wano. Wano says that he had seen “six-foot-high glass jar in which a Western man was pickled in formaldehyde. The man had been cut into two pieces, vertically.” There were many other jars in the headquarters of Unit 731 containing other body parts from different people, labeled often as their ethnicity. An anonymous Unit 731 veteran says that most of the jars had been noted as Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian, although there were occasionally American, English, and French. Some body parts were even sent in from other places.

Other experiments included prisoners being locked inside a pressure chamber to test how much pressure the body can handle before their eyes started popping out, being exposed to poisonous gas and many more biological and chemical weapons, having limbs cut off for studying blood loss, having cut off limbs attached to different parts of the body, having horse urine injected into kidneys, and having lethal dosages of x-rays. Kristof noted that “The accounts are wrenching to read even after so much time has passed: a Russian mother and daughter left in a gas chamber, for example, as doctors peered through thick glass and timed their convulsions, watching as the woman sprawled over her child in a futile effort to save her from the gas.”

Hisato Yoshimura, apart from infection based experiments, led the frostbite experiments, which focused on the effects of frostbite on human limbs. He gave orders to freeze limbs of prisoners, often until they were black. The prisoners were let in only when an officer was sure that their limbs were frozen. The officers would test limbs by beating them with a stick, as they knew that frozen limbs sound like wooden boards upon hitting. 

After chilling prisoners’ limbs to near 0 degrees Celsius with ice water, Yoshimura continued to chop off parts of the limb, especially fingers, so that he may record how the frostbite was affecting human limbs. He and his team experimented on subjects as young as three years old, with a needle in their finger to keep it from clenching into a fist. 

Effects During War

The Japanese Military used the biological weapons developed by Unit 731 directly on Chinese civilian population. Agents in divisions other than the first division in Unit 731 would spread the diseases by train, road, and airplanes. Many Chinese civilians developed the worst infections on their limbs, and only a few were exposed to treatment since no local doctors or hospitals had seen the infections before.

Quzhou village, Ya Fan village, and Chong Shan village in the Zhejiang Province had suffered deeply from the Bubonic Plague, as well as Dysentery, Typhoid, Cholera, and many more. In an episode of BBC Correspondent, Wu Shi-Gen, a victim of Unit 731’s biological weapons, tells his story of how the Bubonic Plague had affected his nine-year old brother. The rest of the family chose to lock his little brother away in another room to minimize the possibilities of infections while the little boy cried out from the room. Wu said he still remembers how he could not run in and help his brother when he cried out in pain.

Ya Fan village was affected with an unknown infection, commonly known to residents as “The Rotten Leg Disease.” A victim of this infection describes it as something that “started like an insect bite, then swelling and unbearable pain. Then his flesh started rotting away. Many died of it. Experts say it’s probably Glanders, another of Unit 731’s special recipes. Treatments were ineffectual and cost a fortune.” He stated that while his mother and he both had the disease on their legs, she refused the medicine so that he could have it instead of her. She passed away a few months later.

Aside from negative effects, Unit 731’s research was also used to heal Japanese soldiers with certain conditions. Studying about human conditions like frostbites and different diseases, the doctors could effectively pinpoint medical solutions for their sick soldiers. For instance, the frostbite experiment revealed that putting frozen limbs in water from 100 to 122 degrees Celsius is the best.

Aftermath

As soon as the World War II was over, the scientists at Unit 731’s headquarters started burning the building down, getting rid of all the evidence. When Shiro Ishii and many others were captured by China and sent over to the US for a trial, they had a deal with President MacArthur. He decided to let go of the Unit 731’s scientists free of charge for the war crimes in exchange for their medical research data.

In addition, Japanese government was fairly late to apologize to the rightful victims of Unit 731, while paying war tributes to the dead war criminals of Unit 731. They have been continuously visiting their shrines every year since 2013, offending neighboring countries and victims. Many news articles had been written about it, yet they do not seem to matter to the Japanese government.

Many Japanese scholars also deny the fact that there was ever a Unit 731 and state that the history involving the group is fabricated, although there are plenty of evidences. The Japanese history textbooks do not cover most of Japan’s horrific acts in World War II, leading them to believe that Japan was mostly a victim country rather than hostile like their opponents. By large, the Japanese public has a false sense of history due to the fact that their history textbooks are skewed. 

The former members of Unit 731 seem to have conflicting opinions about the publicity of the topic. Yoshio Shinozuka and some others had gone to give talks and share information about Unit 731, but others like Toshimi Mizobuchi intend to keep the promise to hide the information. A portion of Unit 731 members still hold their annual staff reunion parties hosted by Mizobuchi.

Conclusion

Unit 731 has been one of of the most cruel groups to do human experimentation, yet so few people that I’ve met know about what really happened. Although these inhumane experiments could be defended by saying that they were useful for modern medical science, they were definitely not worth the cost of many civilian lives as well as prisoners’ suffering.

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Glossary

Maruta — “Log” in Japanese. Prisoners were often called logs so that they could be experimented on without scientists feeling remorse.

Vivisection — Much like dissection, but with an alive person.

References

Unit 731: Japan’s Biological Warfare Project. (2018). Retrieved March 14, 2018, from https://unit731.org/
Kristof, N. D. (1995, March 17). Unmasking Horror — A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/17/world/unmasking-horror-a-special-report-japan-confronting-gruesome-war-atrocity.html?pagewanted=all
L. (2013, February 11). Unit 731: Japan’s biological force. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LfMNX3TsT0
Working, R. (2001, June 5). The trial of Unit 731. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2001/06/05/commentary/world-commentary/the-trial-of-unit-731/#.WqoQ6z9zJhE
McCurry, J. (2013, December 26). Japan’s Shinzo Abe angers neighbours and US by visiting war dead shrine. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/japan-shinzo-abe-tension-neighbours-shrine
Beijing, S. A. (2014, October 17). China protests at Japanese PM’s latest WW2 shrine tribute. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/17/china-protests-japan-shinzo-abe-yasukuni-shrine
Japanese PM Abe sends ritual offering to Yasukuni shrine for war dead. (2017, October 17). Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-yasukuni/japanese-pm-abe-sends-ritual-offering-to-yasukuni-shrine-for-war-dead-idUSKBN1CL355
Abe training jet photo sparks outrage in South Korean media. (2013, May 15). Retrieved March 24, 2018, from http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1238533/abe-training-jet-photo-sparks-outrage-south-korean-media
Tsuneishi, K. (2005, November 24). Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warfare Program. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://apjjf.org/-Tsuneishi-Keiichi/2194/article.html
Pure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard for Human Suffering. (2016, June 15). Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https://www.medicalbag.com/despicable-doctors/pure-evil-wartime-japanese-doctor-had-no-regard-for-human-suffering/article/472462/
Tsuchiya, T. (2007, December 16). Retrieved March 24, 2018, from http://www.lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp/user/tsuchiya/gyoseki/presentation/UNESCOkumamoto07.html
Unit 731: One of the Most Terrifying Secrets of the 20th Century. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2018, from https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~kann20c/classweb/dw2/page1.html

“Security by design is a mandatory prerequisite to securing the IoT macrocosm, the Dyn attack was just a practice run.”

-James Scott, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology

Introduction

With the advent of the Internet of Things in every facet of our existence, our lives have never been better. It has become an important hub, promising a  “smarter life”  by establishing communications between different embedded systems with people. The Internet of Things represents a system which consisting of many different kinds of sensors, used alone or combined together to establish connections between one’s self and the surrounding environment. This new technology is pushing the world towards a more connected state, however, we must not disregard the security hazards that come along. The incredible number of connected devices presents numerous points where a malicious attacker may enter one’s system. If compromised, we may see the greatest leakage of personal and private information in our existence. Although its purpose seems harmless enough, we must acknowledge the danger in the future that hackers have the ability to invade one’s private life through their expansive usage and dependence on the Internet of Things.

Background

Before delving into the dangers that come along with the dependence on the Internet of Things (IoT), one must first understand what they are and do for us.

Sometimes referred to as the Internet of Objects, IoTs promise to bring about a technological revolution to the entire world by connecting many objects together in a seamless experience. Clearly, the Internet has made a monumental impact on communications, business, science, education, and humanity as well, by connecting people from the farthest of places. With the IoTs, the Internet will be further utilized as a means of communications between numerous objects.

Each object should be able to recognize themselves and develop intelligence through the information communicated among themselves. This ideology will help create new technologies and applications to provide services for notifications and entertainment to automation and security. In fact, it is projected that by 2020, tens of billions of devices will be connected to the Internet and 50% of all new businesses will rely on IoTs.

With so many devices on the way, a clear outline was designed such that all devices should be able to communicate with one another. The protocol in which these devices will communicate with one another was established by IBM, known as the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. This describes a stack of seven protocol layers, compared to the 4 used by the TCP/IP model. From the first layer to the last, the layers are represented as Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application. The first two, Physical and Data Link, is concerned with how each device is physically connected to the network via hardware. Network defines how routers deliver packets of data between source and destination hosts while transport focuses on end-to-end communication and provides features including reliability, congestion avoidance, and guarantees that packets will be delivered the same order they were sent. The remaining three layers cover the application-level messaging (ex. HTTP/S).

Furthermore, there are various methods of communication that the IoT network technologies utilize. Each technology has their own advantages and disadvantages, however, the most widely used approaches are also currently cellular, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet. These are mainly aimed at providing low-power, low-cost, and long-range connections (With the exception of Wi-Fi, however, it does provide that highest data throughput of all the current approaches). Additionally, they are often used in large-scale deployments in businesses or education. Other mechanisms include BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) ZigBee, NFC, and RFID. As these newer designs are improved and optimized, they are planned to supersede the older methods as they will provide higher bandwidth while using significantly less power.

As simple as their purpose may be, there is much more complexity behind IoTs than what a normal consumer realizes. This complexity is important, however, because it is how malicious attackers will exploit security flaws.

Current Problems

With the heavy adoption of IoTs throughout all parts of life, hackers have found more and more loopholes to steal one’s information. The need to provide security for IOT infrastructure is of dire importance. A combination of security flaws, non-updateable software, and ignorant programming all lead to possibilities of huge breaches from the inside. Additionally, IOT devices are generally able to access multiple administrative domains, and access to that would allow attacks to become much more widespread and uncontainable. These devices are appealing as they essentially provide an unguarded entrance towards one’s private information without having to go through the front door.

Often times, corporate greed and ignorance are at fault for security breaches found within IOT appliances. For example, often times the micro-controller within the device will run on older or much simpler software. This is to keep profit margins as high as possible as the process to mass-produce becomes cheaper and less complex. For example, software in routers was found to be running on Linux operating systems, that, on average, were four years old from the time the product was initially released. Whether patches during that time were already incorporated is unknown, as well as if further flaws within that version of the operating system were be found post-release. Hackers can easily infiltrate one’s system because of an out-dated and unsafe operating system. Another problem is figuring out how to update products. A common question that we should be asking is how a computer-chip company such as Broadcom or Qualcomm plans on updating the billions of chips within the IOTs. Unfortunately, these companies have chosen to turn a blind eye begin working on the next updated model than keeping their older products usable. The problem with this process is that there is no incentive or ability to participate software once it’s been mass-produced and released to the public. It also leaves older devices more susceptible to attacks as attackers can target flaws not found before. Furthermore, to make matters worse, often times components will not use all of the source code and replace those holes with “binary blobs”, or indiscernible binary code. The result of this is that companies are shipping out half-baked devices to consumers that can do just what is advertised and that’s about it.

Additional means of exploitation include taking advantage of the risks and vulnerabilities of a certain language. For example, hackers may be able to take advantage of a C-based device via buffer overflow. This occurs as nothing in C is range-checked by default, so it becomes very easy to overflow a buffer. The result of “buffer overflows” is that it may change the address of a function is returned to. Another example is writing too few characters into a buffer. The problem here is that C will continue processing, possibly expecting another byte or null terminator. This could result in outputting more information or hitting protected memory for a DOS attack. Simple code reviews and analysis before shipping would easily solve these problems but companies often forego this in order to expedite the process.

Lastly, often times hackers are as good with social engineering as they are with computers. Hackers will rely on human interaction and trick people into breaking normal security procedures. The data is obtained from the interaction is then used to access private systems and or additional data.

Pressure must be put upon companies so as not to take the easy way out. Meanwhile, consumers should be informed and alerted when security flaws and patches are released. With the possibility of 20-50 billion IoTs expected to flood consumers homes and business by 2020, the need for security has never been greater.

Preventing future IOT attacks

Although the Internet of Things may promise of a life of ease, the increasing adoption and integration of these devices into our lives and infrastructure bring many vulnerabilities as well. Despite all the problems current IOTs face in terms of security, there are still some things that consumers can do to protect themselves. For instance, one can ensure that all their smart devices have all their security features enabled and using secure passwords on them as well. For those who are more technologically adept, they can also enable all security features on all devices, close unused ports on devices and routers, and utilize encryption for all networks.

Conclusion

As long as this problem is ignored, attacks are only going to become more dangerous and fixing devices will become more expensive. Paying this cost now, through better software engineering and facilitation, is much cheaper than paying the cost of a possible security disaster. Nevertheless, this rapid deployment and installation of IOTs will require much effort from both companies and consumers to tackle and create solutions for the dangers that come along with it.

References

1. Eastwood, Gary. “5 Of the Biggest Cybersecurity Risks Surrounding IoT Development.” Network World, Network World, 27 June 2017, www.networkworld.com/article/3204007/internet-of-things/5-of-the-biggest-cybersecurity-risks-surrounding-iot-development.html.
2. Farooq, M. U., et al. “A Review on Internet of Things.” A Review on Internet of Things, International Journal of Computer Applications, Mar. 2015, pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2006/d0fca0546bdeb7c3f0527ffd299cff7c7ea7.pdf.
3. Gerber, Anna. “Connecting All the Things in the Internet of Things.” IBM – United States, IBM, 3 Jan. 2018, www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/iot-lp101-connectivity-network-protocols/index.html.
4. Lucciano, Michael. “How Hackers Are Taking Advantage Of IoT Security Vulnerabilities.” Wireless Design and Development, Wireless, 5 Apr. 2017, www.wirelessdesignmag.com/blog/2017/04/how-hackers-are-taking-advantage-iot-security-vulnerabilities.