The threat from state-sponsored cyberattacks on the nation’s digital infrastructure, including those directed by Beijing-affiliated groups, has increased in sophistication and severity over the past year, the Department of Cyber Security said yesterday.
Last year, Chinese hackers mounted 288 successful cyberattacks on the government’s systems, or 80 percent of the total of 360 successful attacks that the department discovered, department Director Chien Hung-wei (簡宏偉) said.
Each month, the government’s systems are subjected to anywhere between 20 million and 40 million attacks, in addition to billions of probing actions made by hackers looking for weaknesses, he said.
Photo: courtesy of Military News Agency
These actions are initiated by hackers from around the world, though groups based in China are believed to be involved in many of them, Chien said.
The overwhelming majority of cyberattacks are level 1 or level 2 events that result in unauthorized changes to Web pages or other minor damage, he said.
However, the government’s digital domains suffered 10 level 3 incidents, which might have compromised personal data stored on the affected systems, he said.
While there were no successful level 4 attacks — the highest threat level — against the nation’s infrastructure, Chinese hackers had improved the success rate of their attacks, he said.
“The increasing precision of Chinese attacks is a matter of concern for this department,” Chien said.
Hackers route their attacks through servers in the US, Russia, EU member states and other nations, which makes pinpointing an attack’s point of origin difficult, he said.
However, the department is able to identify specific patterns, traits and other modes of operation that are associated with China-sponsored hackers, including the presence of certain characters or styles of coding used in hacking tools, he said.
Hackers from China, North Korea and Russia have been highly active, and Taiwan often serves as a testing ground for new hack tools or techniques before their deployment against targets in other nations, he said.
As a result, foreign governments have expressed an interest in gaining access to the information the department has collected on cyberattacks directed against Taiwan, he said.
The department is overseeing the government’s efforts to develop a system of defense to shield its core computer systems, infrastructure and sensitive data from cyberattacks, Chien said.
The defensive system would involve building up defenses at each of the government’s Web portals and each of the office domains connected to them, he said.
Furthermore, government offices need to communicate with each other and share information about cyberattacks to coordinate their security efforts and discern emerging threats, he said.
An academic, on the day of being nominated a Cabinet official, had received an e-mail with an embedded virus that was designed to penetrate the government’s internal networks, said an official, who asked not to be named.
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
‘LAGGING BEHIND’: The NATO secretary-general called on democratic allies to be ‘clear-eyed’ about Beijing’s military buildup, urging them to boost military spending NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte mentioning China’s bullying of Taiwan and its ambition to reshape the global order has significance during a time when authoritarian states are continuously increasing their aggression, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. In a speech at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte said Beijing is bullying Taiwan and would start to “nibble” at Taiwan if Russia benefits from a post-invasion peace deal with Ukraine. He called on democratic allies to boost defense investments and also urged NATO members to increase defense spending in the face of growing military threats from Russia
PEACEFUL RESOLUTION: A statement issued following a meeting between Australia and Britain reiterated support for Taiwan and opposition to change in the Taiwan Strait Canada should support the peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s destiny according to the will of Taiwanese, Canadian lawmakers said in a resolution marking the second anniversary of that nation’s Indo-Pacific strategy on Monday. The Canadian House of Commons committee on Canada-Chinese relations made the comment as part of 34 recommendations for the new edition of the strategy, adding that Ottawa should back Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, first published in October 2022, emphasized that the region’s security, trade, human rights, democracy and environmental protection would play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s future. The strategy called for Canada to deepen
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
RSS