Senior intelligence officials have identified the specific Chinese military outfit and technical surveillance unit tasked with cyberwarfare against Taiwan and say it is located on the campus of Wuhan University, in Wuhan, Hubei Province.
They said the Wuhan University-based unit is actually the Sixth Bureau of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department’s (GSD) Third Department.
The Sixth Bureau is engaged in technical aspects of surveillance and intelligence-gathering on important Taiwanese agencies, intercepting telecommunications signals, hacking computers and mobile phone service networks, and satellite imagery reconnaissance against Taiwan, according to recent statements and interviews with Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) and Ministry of National Defense (MND) officials.
“China’s espionage activities and intelligence-gathering against Taiwan and other countries is always hidden under the guise of academic research centers, non-profit foundations or private sector companies,” said a ministry official who declined to be named.
“It is the same for the PLA’s GSD Sixth Bureau. Its units have network specialists, computer technicians, analysts and trained hackers working in offices at Wuhan University,” he said.
“These offices are installed on campus under the cover of research centers and telecommunication laboratories,” he said.
Other nations who have come under cyberattack and digital information theft have also reported that Chinese cyberarmy units are operating inside university campuses.
“The aim is to conduct state espionage work under the facade of academic research,” the defense ministry official said.
Foreign and Taiwanese defense experts said the Sixth Bureau is one of the 12 bureaus under the PLA’s GSD Third Department (abbreviated as “3PLA”), whose mandates and functions fall under the framework of technical reconnaissance and digital information warfare.
PLA Unit 61398 in Shanghai’s Pudong District, believed to be responsible for the hacking and theft of business information as well as designing malware attacks against the US and other Western countries, is part of the same agency network under 3PLA’s 2nd Bureau.
The unit gained widespread attention after the US Department of Justice on May 19 last year indicted five PLA officers with conducting economic cyberespionage against US companies, including Westinghouse Electric, US Steel, Allegheny Technologies and Alcoa, as well as the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union.
The five men were identified as working for Unit 61398.
Figures compiled by the National Security Bureau and other government departments in Taiwan show that in 2013, the NSB came under Chinese cyberwarfare attack 7.22 million times, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) came under 1.56 million cyberattacks and the defense ministry faced 1.01 million attacks.
According to a senior MIB officer, China’s surveillance and espionage activities against Taiwan can be divided into two main areas: human intelligence and signals intelligence.
The human intelligence programs against Taiwan are mostly directed by its Ministry of State Security (also known as guoan, 國安部), along with the United Work Front Department, which is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, the MIB officer said.
These programs are aimed at recruiting or enticing Taiwanese officials and agents for information, the officer said.
However, signals intelligence programs against Taiwan that monitor telecommunications, radar, radio and other signals are under the command of the GSD Third Department, he said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
A British man was arrested for attempting to smuggle 14.37kg of marijuana into Taiwan through Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei Customs said late yesterday. The man, who arrived from Bangkok at 9pm on Friday, was asked by customs officers to open his luggage during a random inspection, Taipei Customs said in a news release. The passenger, whose identity was not disclosed, refused to open his suitcase and tried to flee the restricted area. He was eventually subdued by three customs officials and an Aviation Police Bureau officer. A later search of his checked luggage uncovered 14.37kg of marijuana buds. The case was handed over
RSS