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
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
RSS