After a trove of files related to Chinese hacking contractor iSoon (安洵) were leaked in February, providing a rare insight into Beijing’s hackers-for-hire ecosystem and its outsourcing of cyberoperations to private contractors, Japanese public broadcaster NHK released a documentary on the contents, which showed the extent of China’s cognitive warfare operations targeting Taiwan and other democracies.
A suspected whistle-blower leaked 557 documents from the Shanghai-based company, including marketing material, spreadsheets and more than 16,000 messages from chat logs of iSoon employees, which showed that iSoon’s largest client was the Chinese Ministry of State Security, which sought mass data harvesting and surveillance of Chinese dissidents. The Chinese government’s targets include international government agencies, diplomatic missions, telecoms, news media and academic institutions in at least 20 countries, including Taiwan, Japan and NATO members.
The documentary, titled Tracking China’s Leaked Documents, showed that Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists, such as TeamT5, had also discovered the leaked files and verified that China is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.
Evidence of China’s cognitive warfare campaigns was also found in the leaked documents, including online posts spreading misinformation about Taiwan-India migrant worker agreements. A post on online forum Dcard that triggered a small-scale protest against Indian migrant workers in December last year, titled “opening up to 100,000 Indian migrant workers will make Taiwan a sexual assault island,” was discovered to be Chinese disinformation, said Taipei-based Doublethink Lab, which tracks online disinformation.
The cybersecurity industry in China has increased exponentially since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in 2014 urged the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to create a new strategy of information warfare as a major pillar of its defense reforms. The number of Chinese cybercompanies, like iSoon, has increased to more than 4,000, most of them working with Chinese security agencies on cyberwarfare operations, experts say. This year, the PLA has upgraded its information-warfare units and created a new Information Support Force that reports directly to the Chinese Central Military Commission, chaired by Xi, a move widely considered to be part of his ambition to build an “informatized” and “intelligentized” military.
In parallel to its escalating military drills, economic sanctions and diplomatic exclusion to intimidate Taiwan, Beijing employs massive cognitive warfare efforts to weaken the morale and unity of Taiwanese.
The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau said that during China’s “Joint Sword-2024B” drills on Monday last week, it detected many false reports online from abroad that denigrated Taiwan’s military capabilities and attempted to frame Taiwan’s government as being to blame for the escalation in cross-strait tensions. Moreover, the Ministry of National Defense said that government agencies receive an estimated 5 million cyberattacks a day, which Microsoft identified as being from Chinese state-sponsored groups.
The National Security Bureau in a recent report raised the alarm that China’s cyberforces are honing their skills to infiltrate Taiwan’s key telecom infrastructure to destabilize the nation during a conflict. The FBI also warned that Chinese government-linked hackers had compromised critical infrastructure across industries in the US and Asia, aiming to disrupt communications.
Chinese hacking and cognitive warfare operations would certainly continue as Beijing seeks to undermine public confidence and international trust in President William Lai’s (賴清德) government.
Therefore, the government should accelerate its work to bolster government agencies’ and civil professional bodies’ preparedness, and work with like-minded nations to strengthen their capabilities to combat Beijing’s malicious cognitive and cyberthreats.
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