The number of Chinese cyberattacks targeting Ministry of Foreign Affairs computer systems last year was about 39 times greater than the number of attacks in 2018, a source said on Monday.
There were an average of 2,100 attacks daily last year, and nearly 770,000 attacks in total, up from about 20,000 attacks in 2018, the source said, adding that information security officials have expressed serious concern about the situation.
Attacks have also become more sophisticated, they said.
“Last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began more closely monitoring all probes and scans of its systems, taking the stance that it would rather risk erroneously terminating a legitimate connection than overlooking a genuine attack,” the source said.
Its allocation of resources for tackling cyberattacks was the reason the ministry’s annual budget was increased last year, they said.
Its request of NT$297.59 million (US$10.43 million) for the “management of information security” was used to upgrade computer systems, including network equipment; lease a dedicated transnational backbone network; and establish an information security monitoring center, the source said.
Of the attacks the monitoring center detected last year, about 410,000 were scans and probes of the ministry’s computers and close to 150,000 were attempts to break into its e-mail system, they said.
“Since adjusting its approach to cyberattacks last year, the ministry is now analyzing every hacking attempt, and using that information to help it block such attempts more quickly,” the source said.
“This approach requires more effort, but the ministry is able to stop attacks before sensitive information is compromised,” they said.
The ministry is one of the most attacked government bodies, second only to the Presidential Office.
The ministry in the past few years has been encouraging Taiwanese to register personal information with it when traveling abroad, so that it can more easily provide consular assistance in emergency situations, the source said, adding that the information would be securely transmitted to its representative office in the traveler’s destination country.
However, Chinese hackers broke into the ministry’s secure e-mail system in 2017, stealing the personal information about 10,000 Taiwanese.
After the incident, the ministry secured its e-mail system, and has not experienced a similar incident since, the source said.
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