The threat from state-sponsored cyberattacks on the nation’s digital infrastructure, including those directed by Beijing-affiliated groups, has increased in sophistication and severity over the past year, the Department of Cyber Security said yesterday.
Last year, Chinese hackers mounted 288 successful cyberattacks on the government’s systems, or 80 percent of the total of 360 successful attacks that the department discovered, department Director Chien Hung-wei (簡宏偉) said.
Each month, the government’s systems are subjected to anywhere between 20 million and 40 million attacks, in addition to billions of probing actions made by hackers looking for weaknesses, he said.
Photo: courtesy of Military News Agency
These actions are initiated by hackers from around the world, though groups based in China are believed to be involved in many of them, Chien said.
The overwhelming majority of cyberattacks are level 1 or level 2 events that result in unauthorized changes to Web pages or other minor damage, he said.
However, the government’s digital domains suffered 10 level 3 incidents, which might have compromised personal data stored on the affected systems, he said.
While there were no successful level 4 attacks — the highest threat level — against the nation’s infrastructure, Chinese hackers had improved the success rate of their attacks, he said.
“The increasing precision of Chinese attacks is a matter of concern for this department,” Chien said.
Hackers route their attacks through servers in the US, Russia, EU member states and other nations, which makes pinpointing an attack’s point of origin difficult, he said.
However, the department is able to identify specific patterns, traits and other modes of operation that are associated with China-sponsored hackers, including the presence of certain characters or styles of coding used in hacking tools, he said.
Hackers from China, North Korea and Russia have been highly active, and Taiwan often serves as a testing ground for new hack tools or techniques before their deployment against targets in other nations, he said.
As a result, foreign governments have expressed an interest in gaining access to the information the department has collected on cyberattacks directed against Taiwan, he said.
The department is overseeing the government’s efforts to develop a system of defense to shield its core computer systems, infrastructure and sensitive data from cyberattacks, Chien said.
The defensive system would involve building up defenses at each of the government’s Web portals and each of the office domains connected to them, he said.
Furthermore, government offices need to communicate with each other and share information about cyberattacks to coordinate their security efforts and discern emerging threats, he said.
An academic, on the day of being nominated a Cabinet official, had received an e-mail with an embedded virus that was designed to penetrate the government’s internal networks, said an official, who asked not to be named.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
A bipartisan group of US representatives have introduced a draft US-Taiwan Defense Innovation Partnership bill, aimed at accelerating defense technology collaboration between Taiwan and the US in response to ongoing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill was introduced by US representatives Zach Nunn and Jill Tokuda, with US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and US Representative Ashley Hinson joining as original cosponsors, a news release issued by Tokuda’s office on Thursday said. The draft bill “directs the US Department of Defense to work directly with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense through their respective
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA