Senior intelligence officials have identified the specific Chinese military outfit and technical surveillance unit tasked with cyberwarfare against Taiwan and say it is located on the campus of Wuhan University, in Wuhan, Hubei Province.
They said the Wuhan University-based unit is actually the Sixth Bureau of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department’s (GSD) Third Department.
The Sixth Bureau is engaged in technical aspects of surveillance and intelligence-gathering on important Taiwanese agencies, intercepting telecommunications signals, hacking computers and mobile phone service networks, and satellite imagery reconnaissance against Taiwan, according to recent statements and interviews with Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) and Ministry of National Defense (MND) officials.
“China’s espionage activities and intelligence-gathering against Taiwan and other countries is always hidden under the guise of academic research centers, non-profit foundations or private sector companies,” said a ministry official who declined to be named.
“It is the same for the PLA’s GSD Sixth Bureau. Its units have network specialists, computer technicians, analysts and trained hackers working in offices at Wuhan University,” he said.
“These offices are installed on campus under the cover of research centers and telecommunication laboratories,” he said.
Other nations who have come under cyberattack and digital information theft have also reported that Chinese cyberarmy units are operating inside university campuses.
“The aim is to conduct state espionage work under the facade of academic research,” the defense ministry official said.
Foreign and Taiwanese defense experts said the Sixth Bureau is one of the 12 bureaus under the PLA’s GSD Third Department (abbreviated as “3PLA”), whose mandates and functions fall under the framework of technical reconnaissance and digital information warfare.
PLA Unit 61398 in Shanghai’s Pudong District, believed to be responsible for the hacking and theft of business information as well as designing malware attacks against the US and other Western countries, is part of the same agency network under 3PLA’s 2nd Bureau.
The unit gained widespread attention after the US Department of Justice on May 19 last year indicted five PLA officers with conducting economic cyberespionage against US companies, including Westinghouse Electric, US Steel, Allegheny Technologies and Alcoa, as well as the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union.
The five men were identified as working for Unit 61398.
Figures compiled by the National Security Bureau and other government departments in Taiwan show that in 2013, the NSB came under Chinese cyberwarfare attack 7.22 million times, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) came under 1.56 million cyberattacks and the defense ministry faced 1.01 million attacks.
According to a senior MIB officer, China’s surveillance and espionage activities against Taiwan can be divided into two main areas: human intelligence and signals intelligence.
The human intelligence programs against Taiwan are mostly directed by its Ministry of State Security (also known as guoan, 國安部), along with the United Work Front Department, which is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, the MIB officer said.
These programs are aimed at recruiting or enticing Taiwanese officials and agents for information, the officer said.
However, signals intelligence programs against Taiwan that monitor telecommunications, radar, radio and other signals are under the command of the GSD Third Department, he said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
SCENARIOS: A potential conflict with Beijing would not be similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China would target energy and food supplies, a researcher said China is likely to continue using economic and cyberoperations against Taiwan to force it to capitulate without resorting to a military attack, Fox News reported yesterday, citing the outcome of a tabletop exercise. Washington-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) earlier this month held a tabletop exercise in Taipei focusing on Beijing’s use of economic and cybercoercion against Taiwan. The FDD mentioned an “anaconda strategy,” in which Beijing would likely use cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns followed by a blockade or other measures to strangulate Taiwan, rather than attempting an invasion, the report said. A large-scale cyberattack would be
HSINCHU CASES: Five people among 35 who were reported being sick were still in hospital after eating at a vendor in a market in Jhubei, the local health agency said Thirty-five people have sought medical treatment for acute symptoms after allegedly eating banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) from a vendor in Jhubei City (竹北), the Hsinchu County Public Health Bureau said yesterday. The bureau said that since Saturday, it has received several reports of suspected food poisoning from hospitals. The vendor has been ordered to temporarily suspend its business, it said, adding that tests were being conducted to determine whether the people had food poisoning, with results expected in about two weeks. A preliminary investigation showed that the people who sought treatment had recently eaten banh mi at a vendor at a retail market
GOOD MODEL: Speaking at his book launch, Law said that Taiwan is the most democratic Chinese-speaking country, which is why Hong Kongers relocated here China has suffocated Hong Kong’s civil society and its next target could be Taiwan, Nathan Law (羅冠聰), cofounder of the disbanded pro-democracy Hong Kong political party Demosisto, said in Taipei yesterday. Law made the remarks at a launch in Taipei for his book When the Wind Blows — the Struggles for Freedom of Hong Kong (時代推著我們前行:羅冠聰的香港備忘錄). Law has been living in the UK since he fled Hong Kong in 2020, and the book is about his fighting for the cause of freedom in the area. He was granted political asylum in 2021. “Fleeing is a long and distressing process, but it also
IMITATING OTHERS? Tsai Ing-wen’s office said the former president rents a commercial unit for her personal office and had never used election funds to purchase real estate Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday confirmed that he used about NT$43 million (US$1.35 million) from his presidential election subsidy to purchase an office unit near the Legislative Yuan in May. Ko made the remarks after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) earlier in the day told a news conference that she received a tip-off that the TPP chairman had purchased a 48.76 ping (161.2m2) office unit at Jinan Building (濟南大樓), a commercial building in Taipei’s Zhongzheng District (中正). Lin said that Ko purchased the unit on May 10, paying about NT$43 million in cash,