An information security breach led to financial data concerning at least 2,000 Taipei City Government employees being leaked on Tuesday night, with city officials ascribing the incident to outdated and vulnerable data management software.
The information, which was leaked to Yahoo Taiwan’s search engine, included the names, pay grades, salaries and bank accounts of employees at the Department of Transportation, the Construction Management Office, the Department of Civil Servant Development and the Hydraulic Engineering Office.
“The [data management] program has not been updated for 15 years. Its capacity to uphold information security is inferior,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in response to media requests for comment on the issue at an event to promote the sale of merchandise to mark the Lunar New Year holiday.
Photo: Liu Ching-hou, Taipei Times
Ko said that he had instructed the Taipei Department of Information Technology, which operates the program, to determine the severity of the leak and to come up with a plan to update the software.
The leak should not be treated as an isolated incident and he will instruct the department to update all software used by the city government regularly, Ko said.
The city’s old software is expected to be overhauled this year, as the Taipei City Council on Tuesday approved a city government’s request for more funds to update its system, he added.
Separately yesterday, Taipei Department of Information Technology Commissioner Lee Wei-bin (李維斌) said that the breach was secured 10 minutes after the department was informed about it by the Taipei Police Department.
The department of information yesterday morning met with Executive Yuan officials and raised the severity of the breach from level one to level three, Lee said.
He urged employees whose bank accounts have been leaked to change their passwords.
Some city government employees whose computers were contaminated by malware could have downloaded software developed by Yahoo Taiwan, resulting in the information leak, he said.
The department of information has been granted a budget of NT$23 million (US$720,213) by the Taipei City Council to investigate the leak, he said.
According to the Chinese-language Apple Daily, Control Yuan member Kao Feng-hsien (高鳳仙) has also opened an investigation into the incident.
In related news, Ko yesterday said that the Taipei Clean Government Committee would likely remain in operation even though the city council on Monday withdrew its budget.
The Control Yuan in August last year issued a corrective measure against the municipal government over its handling of the Taipei Dome project, saying that the committee’s operations lacked a legal basis.
Ko yesterday said that he did not “invent” the committee, as it has been operating under the title of Taipei Clean Government and Anti-Corruption Center since former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) tenure.
The committee’s work has helped the city reclaim NT$3.35 billion in land that Radium Life Tech Co undervalued in the MeHas City housing project, renegotiate a more profitable and reasonable contract with Eslite Group over its use of the Taipei New Horizon building and reported former Taipei Department of Finance head Lee Sush-der (李述德) to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office over Lee’s alleged malpractice in the Dome project, the mayor said.
Ko said that he had individually asked committee members whether they would continue attending meetings without reimbursement, to which they responded affirmatively.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS