The National Security Bureau yesterday said it could not find evidence that hackers had broken into its computers after a legislator claimed to have received an e-mail from the bureau that contained a virus.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓) told reporters he received a “daily global news brief” via e-mail from the bureau’s Intelligence Publication Center and found that it contained a “Trojan horse” virus.
COMPROMISED
Chou said he suspected the bureau’s computers might have been compromised by hackers, adding that other legislators and government officials had received the same e-mail.
The security of the bureau’s computer system appears to have some flaws, he said.
In a statement to the press, the nation’s top civilian spy agency said that while it was true that e-mails from the bureau were sent to a select list of recipients, all e-mails from the bureau had an official digital stamp.
If an e-mail did not contain that electronic stamp, it said, it did not come from the bureau.
The bureau said the daily global news brief was sent to legislators on the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, as well as officials involved with national security in various government agencies.
The results of an internal investigation showed that the bureau’s computer system was not compromised, it said.
The bureau’s computers have often been targeted by hackers. Last year, its computers were the subject of about 500,000 attempted intrusions a month.
However, all were identified and blocked by the bureau, it said.
MILLIONS OF ATTACKS
Statistics provided by the bureau showed that from January to October last year, its Web site was attacked almost 5 million times, with 3,040,000 attacks coming from within Taiwan and about 590,000 from China.
Nearly 70 percent of the attacks were attempts to take control of the Web site, 11 percent were viruses and almost 3 percent were attempts to access computer systems and programs, the bureau said.
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