The hacker responsible for illegally accessing MacKay Memorial Hospital’s systems and trying to sell patients’ personal information after a failed ransom attempt is a Chinese national named Lo Chengyu (羅政宇), residing in China’s Zhejiang Province, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said yesterday.
The bureau said it has forwarded the case to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday and has issued a wanted notice for Lo.
Lo is accused of contravening articles 346, 359 and 360 of the Criminal Code and the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
Photo: AP
Lo’s wanted status makes him the first Chinese hacker who Taiwanese authorities have identified.
MacKay Memorial Hospital was attacked on Feb. 6 by ransomware uploaded by Lo, who went by the pseudonym of Crazyhunter, the bureau’s High-Tech Crime Center Director-General Rufus Lin (林建隆) said.
Lo demanded a ransom of US$100,000, which the hospital refused, Lin said.
The hacker then put the personal information of about 16.6 million hospital patients on sale on Feb. 28, which prompted the hospital to report the hacking to the Taipei City Police Department’s Zhongshan Precinct, Lin said.
The case was jointly investigated by the Taipei City Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division and the center, Lin said.
Investigators found that 11 establishments had been targeted in cybercrime cases in the past two months, and the malware coding and methods were similar, Lin said.
Police traced the Internet protocols from these cases to Lo, a 20-year-old Zhejiang resident working at an Internet security firm, he said.
Lo had demanded a total of US$800,000 to US$2.5 million from all establishments and received at least US$1 million in illegal proceeds, the bureau said.
Lo’s actions undermined Taiwan’s social order, and his demand for ransom was a psychological threat to Taiwanese, it said.
Additional reporting by Chiu Chun-fu
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS