The numbers and personal codes of more than 100,000 Internet banking and auction-site clients are feared to have been stolen by hackers from across the Taiwan Strait.
Criminal Investigation Bureau officials said yesterday that they had arrested a Taiwanese man named Chen Chung-shun (陳崇順), 30, in Hualien, and seized a huge amount of confidential data, including 45 million e-mail addresses, almost 200,000 bank and auction-site account numbers with their corresponding personal secret codes, and information on three figurehead bank accounts.
Investigators believe Chen has been collaborating with Chinese hackers since February to steal Internet bank codes by planting "shell" or "revised" versions of "Trojan horse" programs into the personal computers of customers using Internet banking services.
Although Chen said he had obtained hundreds of thousands of bank account codes, police found only a portion of the code information at Chen's premises in Hualien.
Chen reported told investigators that he had transferred approximately 100,000 accounts and personal codes to the China-based hackers, and he had no backup copies in his database.
Investigators have urged the public to change their bank codes immediately to avoid losing their money.
Chen had reportedly gathered 45 million Taiwanese e-mail addresses, and in mid-February, he started sending advertising e-mails containing shell or revised Trojan horses to those e-mail addresses. By mid-March, he had sent out over 18 million e-mails.
Police said the banks' firewalls a had not been compromised, but that using the "shell" versions provided by Chinese hackers and attached to the e-mails, Chen managed to record account numbers and personal codes as they were input by bank customers.
After obtaining account num-bers and personal codes, Chen proceeded to transfer money to other accounts.
Although the total amount stolen by the ring is estimated to be several million NT dollars, the full extent of the losses is not yet known.
Officials said the ring withdrew the money from the International Commercial Bank of China ATM machines in China, or transferred it to hundreds of figurehead accounts which had been established in the names of 10 Taiwanese people.
Hundreds of thousands of bank-account numbers, with corresponding personal codes, were exposed to the hackers' machines, according to investigators.
The officials said that among the bank accounts tampered with were savings accounts with funds in excess of NT$200 million (US$5.9 million).
Bureau officials described this type of Internet crime as "secretive, shapeless, borderless, anonymous and without restrictions on distance." They said the total damage caused by the hackers was not yet known.
The Chinese military has built landing bridge ships designed to expand its amphibious options for a potential assault on Taiwan, but their combat effectiveness is limited due to their high vulnerability, a defense expert said in an analysis published on Monday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the deployment of such vessels as part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s East Sea Fleet signals a strong focus on Taiwan. However, the ships are highly vulnerable to precision strikes, which means they could be destroyed before they achieve their intended
About 4.2 million tourist arrivals were recorded in the first half of this year, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. The growth continues to be consistent, with the fourth quarter of this year expected to be the peak in Taiwan, the agency said, adding that it plans to promote Taiwan overseas via partnerships and major events. From January to June, 9.14 million international departures were recorded from Taiwan, an 11 percent increase from the same period last year, with 3.3 million headed for Japan, 1.52 million for China and 832,962 to South Korea,
SOVEREIGNTY: The rigs show that Beijing ‘rejects Taiwan’s jurisdiction’ by building in areas where Taipei demands permission to build or alter installations Chinese oil rigs have been sighted just 26 nautical miles (42km), from Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島), posing a threat to Taiwan’s sovereignty if left unchallenged, a brief published by the Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday said. Pratas Island, 444km from Kaohsiung, is northeast of the South China Sea and houses a Taiwanese garrison. The brief, titled “Rigging the Game: PRC Oil Structures Encroach on Taiwan’s Pratas Island” — referring to the People’s Republic of China — analyzed photographs and said that Beijing’s tools to pressure Taiwan now include oil rigs. “Oil rigs now constitute part of Beijing’s
The Taiwan Experience Education Program (TEEP) has funded short-term internships in Taiwan for more than 4,500 young people from more than 40 countries since 2015, with the goal of attracting and retaining international talent, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. Fifty-five colleges launched 514 projects this year, including in fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, medicine and biotechnology, green energy, and sustainability, it said. The program provides research and practical internships in Taiwan for two to six months, and offers cultural exchange and networking opportunities, the ministry said. For example, National Formosa University’s Embedded System and Autopilot Laboratory developed two solar-powered drones in
RSS