China attempted to flood online forums with negative and misleading information about the Han Kuang exercises, the Ministry of National Defense communications division said yesterday.
The comments were discovered and removed before they could have any effect, the division said.
The military has been widely praised for its performance during this year’s exercises, which likely caught the attention of hackers working for the Chinese government, the report said.
One military official, who declined to be named, said that Russian is adept at the strategy of using online posts to influence public sentiment, citing the conflict in the Ukraine and elections in France and Germany.
Chinese hackers used the strategy late last year when fake photographs showing Chinese jets flying over Yushan (玉山) were posted online, the official said.
The cyberattacks clearly demonstrate the challenge of maintaining a secure online environment and the National Security Bureau needs to be aware of the issue, the official said.
The five-day Han Kuang exercises ended on Friday.
The military’s media outlets posted video clips daily, as it has done during the exercises for several years.
This year’s use of panoramic photographs and aerial shots proved especially popular with online visitors, the official said, adding that these posts in particular were targeted by China’s hackers.
Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) praised the military’s media outlets and the Voice of Han Broadcasting Network, for their quick updates during the Han Kuang exercises.
The outlets also did a good job of handling the cyberattacks, Feng said.
The attacks came from anonymous users and appeared to be aimed at deflating officers’ morale, he said.
When such propaganda first began online, it was clearly from non-Taiwanese users, as the language was inconsistent with local usage. Later, Chinese hackers learned to imitate Taiwanese and demonstrated strong familiarity with local issues.
The efforts made to imitate Taiwanese users indicate the importance the Chinese place on influencing local public opinion.
Military media outlets’ family-themed videos, such as a series it made for Mother’s Day titled Steel Wife, also came under attack from hackers, the official said.
“No military countermeasures are needed. The public attack the hackers on their own — like a defense ministry of the people,” the official said.
However, the military is actively dealing with hackers through various countermeasures, the official said, adding that it “goes to battle every day.”
“Taiwan is fortunate to be a democracy with such free access to information. Although it is hard to manage at times, the public is getting better at distinguishing real posts from fake ones,” officials said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS