Five of the six Internet addresses that were used in the recent high-profile attacks on Google are owned by Taiwanese company Era Digital Media (年代數位媒體股份有限公司), the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The sixth address is owned by another Taiwanese firm, financial software company Syspower (奇唯科技股份有限公司), the report said.
Internet entertainment provider Era Digital Media representatives told the Taipei Times yesterday that they were not aware of the matter and could not comment at this time.
The article said that Google worked with US intelligence and law enforcement agencies to gather evidence to establish that the “masterminds of the attacks were not in Taiwan, but on the Chinese mainland.”
The New York Times article cited a Google executive as saying that despite the locations of the servers, “it only took a few seconds to determine that the real origin was on the mainland.”
Lee Hsiang-chen (李相臣), director of the National Police Administration’s Internet Crime Investigations unit, said that his department had not yet received information regarding the Internet addresses of the attacks originating from Taiwan.
However, he said that factors including a common language were the reasons behind many Chinese hackers routing their attacks through Taiwanese servers.
“The high speed of Taiwan’s Internet infrastructure along with a lack of security and management by operators … are all causes that contribute to this [problem],” Lee said. “If the hackers are from [China], they will also find commonalities in language.”
Highlighting the severity of the problem, US-based computer security company McAfee said that the malicious code allowed hackers to take control and access information on affected computers.
The company said initial investigation results showed that hackers took advantage of a “zero-day exploit” in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. A security advisory later published on Microsoft that Web sites had acknowledged the problem and advised users to set the browser’s Internet security settings to “high.”
In related news, a Chinese human rights lawyer said messages sent to his Google e-mail account became accessible to an unknown outside user, highlighting concerns raised by the company about Internet security breaches in China.
Teng Biao (滕彪), a Beijing-based lawyer, said e-mails sent to his Gmail account were being automatically forwarded to another user without his knowledge. Teng said in a phone interview yesterday that he had not yet informed Google about the intrusion, which he discovered on Thursday.
Meanwhile, China tried yesterday to keep its censorship row with Google from damaging business confidence or ties with Washington, promising good conditions for foreign investors, but giving no sign it might relax Internet controls.
US-China trade and economic ties will not be affected by any of Google’s decisions to withdraw from China, said Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian (姚堅) at a regular briefing. However, he insisted foreign companies must obey Chinese law.
Also See: Vulnerability of Web browser used in Chinese Google attacks, Microsoft says
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS