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.
Photo courtesy of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau
“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 warrant, which also listed their national identification card numbers.
On May 20, the bureau said “hackers” were behind the alleged attack, a report published on Tuesday last week by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said.
ICEFCOM yesterday said the bureau’s accusation that it had conducted a cyberattack against a Guangzhou-based company was unfounded and an act of “slander.”
The false accusations on May 20 and Tuesday last week were widely reported by China’s state-run media and later echoed by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, ICEFCOM said in a statement.
The propaganda campaign escalated, culminating in yesterday’s warrant, which it described as a deliberate attempt to unsettle and intimidate the Taiwanese public, it said.
China also poses a global threat to cyberspace, ICEFCOM said, citing recent statements from the Czech Republic and the EU condemning China’s “malicious cybercampaign,” and reports naming the Chinese Communist Party as a suspect in hacking and information security risks.
ICEFCOM spokesman Colonel Hu Chin-lung (胡錦龍) said that most of the people named in the warrant have retired from the military.
Some of the photographs shown by the bureau appeared to be quite old, he added.
“Some of the photos look like headshots taken during high-school training programs,” Hu said. “They might have been obtained from a third-party educational institution.”
Asked about Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Jessica Chen’s (陳玉珍) suggestion that the bureau’s possession of the individuals’ national ID numbers could indicate a data breach by China, Hu said no military databases containing that information had been compromised.
ICEFCOM is investigating how the bureau obtained the information, he said, adding that a major leak of National Health Insurance data between 2009 and 2022 could be a possible source.
China posted the bounty because it wanted to create the impression that it can exercise long-arm jurisdiction over Taiwan, with the aim of forcing Taiwanese to censor themselves and producing a chilling effect, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said.
However, Taiwanese who cooperate with China by offering tips about these individuals could contravene the National Security Act (國家安全法), Liang said, adding that people should not risk breaking the law for 10,000 yuan.
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
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