Cyberattacks from China on government computers are becoming more difficult to detect, as hackers increasingly use online platforms, such as search engines, to break into systems, a source close to government discussions said.
While the frequency of attacks by China’s cyberarmy has declined, the success rate of such incursions is rising, the source said.
“Taiwan’s official departments suffer from hundreds of successful Internet attacks each year, more than half of which come from assaults by China’s cyberarmy,” said the person, who is not authorized to speak to the media and declined to be identified.
China has denied accusations of engaging in cyberwarfare or hacking and has said that it is itself one of the world’s biggest victims of such incidents.
Neither China’s Taiwan Affairs Office nor the Chinese Cyberspace Administration immediately responded to a request for comment.
The alleged cyberattacks come as Beijing has been increasing diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan.
The source said hackers are adopting new techniques to conceal their activities.
“They frequently go through online platforms such as Google and blogs to hide and give investigators the impression that they are a normal platform or tool so that the investigators ignore background actions,” the person said.
Government agencies face “frequent cyberattacks and scanning of their vulnerabilities, with the attack volume reaching 10 million a month,” the source said.
Most attacks targeted non-core service systems, were low-level in nature and included activities such as changing Web sites and tampering with information, but there have also been more serious attacks on core systems, they said.
The government has evidence that some of the attacks targeted agencies and their Web sites by intruding into servers and stealing account passwords, the source added.
The nation’s representative offices abroad have also been targeted using methods such as taking screen snapshots, keylogging and unpacking related information, the source said.
Since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in 2016, China’s hostility toward Taiwan has increased. Analysts expect cyberattacks will continue to cause a headache for the government.
“Taiwan has very good cyberdefense and investigation skills and capacity. However, under such a huge number of attacks and the special relationship across the Strait, it is really difficult to prevent 100 percent of the attacks,” said Lennon Chang, a senior lecturer in criminology at Monash University in Melbourne.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching