Cyberattacks that temporarily paralyzed government Web sites and manipulated display screens at convenience stores and a train station coincided with the arrival of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Taipei on Tuesday, with Chinese hackers likely to blame.
On Tuesday, the Presidential Office’s Web site was taken offline for about 20 minutes following a distributed denial of service attack, in which multiple computers are focused on a single target in an attempt to take it offline.
The government’s official English-language portal and Web sites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport were also targeted, causing short shutdowns from Tuesday to Friday.
On Wednesday, display screens behind the cashiers at some 7-Eleven convenience stores abruptly changed to a message calling Pelosi a “warmonger” and saying “get out of Taiwan.”
A public display screen at a train station showed a message calling Pelosi’s visit “a severe provocation to the motherland” and “the great China will be united” in simplified Chinese characters.
On Thursday, the Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau’s Web site was changed to show China’s national flag.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said that the government’s English portal and the foreign ministry’s Web sites had since Tuesday detected massive attacks from Internet protocol addresses in China, Russia and other places, with up to 17 million requests per minute reported.
Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) — who on Friday was announced as the first minister of digital affairs — said that the volume of cyberattacks on government Web sites on Tuesday was unprecedented, exceeding 15,000 gigabits in a day, about 23 times more than the previous record.
The APT 27 hacker group, a China-based group that Western governments suspect is behind several attacks on companies and state agencies, on Wednesday released a YouTube video saying that it would conduct “a special cyberoperation against Taiwan,” including “the Taiwan government and all infrastructure” to oppose the provocation by Pelosi’s visit, although the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to comment on the issue.
The cyberactivity, along with Beijing’s unprecedented military drills, are at first glance a furious response to Pelosi’s visit, but they also seem to be a show of its military power to invade or blockade Taiwan, indicating what China’s “hybrid warfare” might look like if it were to launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.
Although the Cabinet said that the operations of government agencies and transportation networks were not affected by the cyberattacks, the incidents should not be overlooked, as obstruction of public-government communication and the spread of disinformation can erode public trust in the government.
The government should conduct a cybersecurity review of its critical agencies and key infrastructure — such as power plants, electric grids, pipelines, telecommunications services and transportation networks — to make sure they are not vulnerable to more sophisticated and damaging cyberattacks.
It should also consider “crowdsourcing” cybersecurity experts by offering rewards for people to test, discover and report security vulnerabilities in government systems.
Moreover, the government should urge the private sector to remain watchful, step up their cyberdefenses and immediately report incidents, as data from the past few years suggest that cyberattacks will continue to increase.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Trying to force a partnership between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Intel Corp would be a wildly complex ordeal. Already, the reported request from the Trump administration for TSMC to take a controlling stake in Intel’s US factories is facing valid questions about feasibility from all sides. Washington would likely not support a foreign company operating Intel’s domestic factories, Reuters reported — just look at how that is going over in the steel sector. Meanwhile, many in Taiwan are concerned about the company being forced to transfer its bleeding-edge tech capabilities and give up its strategic advantage. This is especially
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS