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
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and