Legislature rattled by `PLA' hacker attack

"We haven't ruled out that there might be internal personnel involved in the matter, but we don't know this for sure at the moment."

Chen Hsi-yang, director of the Information and Technology Department at the legislature

A note on a piece of paper indicating that China-based hackers, presumed to belong to a special unit under China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), had broken into the legislature's computer system, has rattled cyber security personnel over the past two weeks.

Some legislative assistants said they received the note from the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau (MJIB) on July 6, but the bureau refused to confirm that it had sent the note.

Security concerns

According to the note, a backdoor program installed on 24 different computers in the offices of legislators from across party lines -- including one used by Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng's (王金平) assistant -- could lead to a breach of confidential information.

"We have located the hackers and discovered that they were PLA officials based in Fujian Province," an anonymous source from the bureau was quoted by Lin Hong-chan (林宏展), a legislator's assistant, as saying.

An official with the MJIB's Computer Crime Prevention Center, who asked not to be named, told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview that the agency was aware of the situation and had warned some legislators of the attack.

Tracing the attack

Lin said the problem came to light because the MJIB found that some e-mails dispatched from a relay station based in the US had been sent in the name of Taiwan's legislators.

"They [MJIB special agents] traced the origin of those e-mails and found out it was Fujian-based hackers who had used a specially designed attack Web site to install a Trojan horse program on legislators' office computers," Lin said.

The note said that computers used in the offices of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Chi (蘇起), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻), Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Legislator Yin Ling-ying (尹玲瑛) and 12 other legislators had all been infected with a Trojan horse.

The Trojan horse program also entered some computers in the offices of the DPP and TSU legislative caucuses, according to the note.

Lee Ming-yueh (李明岳), Chen Chin-jun's assistant, said further discussion was warranted regarding why the computers had been targeted.

"Two computers out of six in our office were attacked. One was for keeping the legislator's schedule and the other was for receiving and sending all documents," he said.

He added: "The computer that was attacked in the [DPP] caucus office was used by an assistant who is in charge of gathering all information and reporting to the head of the caucus."

Inside help?

Lee's concern led to a presumption that the attack was not launched by Chinese hackers alone. Rather, the hackers had possibly collaborated with legislative staff.

"We haven't ruled out that there might be internal personnel involved in the matter, but we don't know this for sure at the moment," said Chen Hsi-yang (陳熙揚), director of the Information and Technology Department at the legislature.

Chen Shi-yang said that the legislature has set up firewalls, which can prevent the Chinese hackers from getting inside its computers.

"We installed a virus scanner for e-mails coming in and out of the legislature. Also, we used Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol [DHCP] to dynamically allocate IP addresses, meaning that there is no way that outside hackers can know any single IP address belonging to the legislature's computers and select their targets," he said.

In the wake of the release of the note, which listed the IP addresses and user numbers of the computers that were attacked, the legislature's cyber security personnel have since July 4 been trying to fix the virus problem.

"We have fixed 15 of the 24 affected computers and quarantined a virus in the other nine computers. Now we are waiting for Philippines-based Trend Micro [Corp] to get back to us on solutions for the various viruses on those nine computers," the director said.

Denial

The Information and Technology Department, however, denied that PLA was the source of the hackers and said the MJIB had first discovered the virus.

"According to Trend Micro's description of the virus, named BKDR_BIFROSE_JH, it was a backdoor-attached virus, but it was not from the PLA," Chen Shi-yang said.

The virus was found by the department's Security Operation Center and not by the MJIB, Chen Shi-yang added.

"Indeed, there's a threat that the PLA's hackers might attack the legislature's network system, but we have done our best to secure it against hackers," the director said.