The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two employees and an outside contractor of Radio Taiwan International (RTI) for allegedly launching a cyberattack against the radio station’s Web site in September.
Prosecutors denounced that Wu and Yue’s actions, such as replacing the website banner with the People’s Republic of China flag, would provoke cross-strait tensions, and therefore sought a penalty of up to three years imprisonment.
The suspects include engineer Wu Cheng-hsun (吳政勳), his manager, Yueh Chao-chu (岳昭莒), and Huang Fu-lin (黃富琳), who worked as a systems maintenance contractor for RTI, the indictment document said.
Photo: Wu Sheng-ju, Taipei Times
Prosecutors said the men planned cyberattacks against RTI in June, with Wu giving Huang an account with the highest level of access so Huang could provide technical support and delete records of Wu’s activities on the Web site.
Yueh, who was informed by Wu about his actions, did not intervene nor report them to his superiors.
Wu on Aug. 20 interfered with the parameters of the RTI Web site, changed its Japanese main page so that it showed simplified Chinese or garbled characters, and interrupted the Web site’s signal, prosecutors said.
On Sept. 11, 18, 19 and 20 he allegedly changed RTI’s main site and replaced the Web site with the cover of the book Retaking the Mainland by the Taiwanese Government: The Concept of Chinese Unification by the ROC, and changed the banner to the flags of the People’s Republic of China and the US.
After being questioned on Sept. 26, he logged onto the RTI Web site and disrupted its functions, showing no signs of remorse, prosecutors said.
Wu and Yueh claimed they acted because they suspected Chinese capital was interfering with the RTI Web site, prosecutors said.
Wu’s actions damaged RTI’s credibility and disrupted its operations, prosecutors said, while local media reported that Wu claimed that he did so to identify loopholes in the broadcaster’s system.
The images that Wu put on the Web site raised tensions across the Taiwan Strait, posing a danger far greater than a general criminal offense, prosecutors said.
Wu’s plan to attack the site on Oct. 10, Double Ten National Day, carried great symbolic meaning, they said.
As the only government-run radio station broadcasting to the international community, RTI is classified as level A key infrastructure according to the Regulations on Classification of Cyber Security Responsibility Levels (資通安全責任等級分級辦法), prosecutors said.
RTI said that its personnel review committee last month decided to fire Wu and issue a major demerit to Yueh for his supervisory misjudgement.
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