The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said it has been subject to serious cyberattacks, notably from China, and has been employing coded messages to keep classified information from hackers.
Hackers might have found it puzzling when they came across terms like the “quarreling department” (吵架部), the “little kids’ department” (幼幼部), or the “birdman” (鳥人) in interior communication between DPP staff, but these are just examples of coded messages that the party uses to throw hackers off their track.
The “quarreling department” refers to the News and Information Department, “the little kids’ department” refers to the Youth Affairs Department and the “birdman” refers to DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), as the last character in his name, peng (鵬), contains the character for “bird,” Cheng said.
“We employ different measures to keep our internal communication secret: For example, when a staffer asks me a question through messaging application A, I would answer using messaging application B,” Cheng said.
“We have also invented code names for people or departments in the party, and we change these names from time to time, so that outsiders will not know what we are talking about,” he said.
The DPP’s internal network is also not connected to its external network to make sure that what goes on in party headquarters stays there, he added.
Hacking of the DPP Web site and its e-mail accounts has increased since March, when the Web site was paralyzed with more than 100,000 cyberattacks from China within 5 minutes.
A party source said that hacking had been a big problem when it was preparing for DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) visit to the US last month, with phishing e-mail giving details about classified meetings.
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