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.
Alain Robert, known as the "French Spider-Man," praised Alex Honnold as exceptionally well-prepared after the US climber completed a free solo ascent of Taipei 101 yesterday. Robert said Honnold's ascent of the 508m-tall skyscraper in just more than one-and-a-half hours without using safety ropes or equipment was a remarkable achievement. "This is my life," he said in an interview conducted in French, adding that he liked the feeling of being "on the edge of danger." The 63-year-old Frenchman climbed Taipei 101 using ropes in December 2004, taking about four hours to reach the top. On a one-to-10 scale of difficulty, Robert said Taipei 101
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
US climber Alex Honnold left Taiwan this morning a day after completing a free-solo ascent of Taipei 101, a feat that drew cheers from onlookers and gained widespread international attention. Honnold yesterday scaled the 101-story skyscraper without a rope or safety harness. The climb — the highest urban free-solo ascent ever attempted — took just more than 90 minutes and was streamed live on Netflix. It was covered by major international news outlets including CNN, the New York Times, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. As Honnold prepared to leave Taiwan today, he attracted a crowd when he and his wife, Sanni,
RSS