One of the suspects accused of last month hacking the Web site of publicly-funded Radio Taiwan International (RTI) allegedly worked on behalf of Taiwan People's Party Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), Mirror Media reported today.
RTI management on Sept. 11 reported to authorities an online attack in which hackers replaced the banner on its Web site with the People’s Republic of China flag.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The for-hire hacker, surnamed Wu (吳), a web administrator at RTI, allegedly accessed sensitive information online, including household registration systems, the report said.
Wu denied any criminal conduct and stated that the RTI website’s backend system had major security loopholes, which he had alerted the company to, but to no avail.
He presented screenshots of chat conversations with Huang and his office assistant, which showed that he had previously been contracted to assist in investigating corruption.
However, Mirror Media reported that Huang had used unpaid hackers to access data from a chat on messaging service Telegram, in which former Democratic Progressive Party secretary-general Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀), then-minister of justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) and then-National Security Council advisor Chen Chun-lin (陳俊麟) discussed high-level judicial appointments.
Huang then allegedly compiled, processed and spread the data, with the hackers uploading screenshots to the dark web priced at NT$20,000 each, the report said.
Prosecutors from the High Prosecutors’ Office have launched a separate criminal investigation into the matter, it added.
Responding to media inquiries, Huang called the report “absolutely absurd,” saying that Wu had simply reported cybersecurity vulnerabilities to him.
He said he asked Wu to provide further information, though Wu did not provide complete data.
Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) said today that he had no knowledge of the matter and would leave the investigation to prosecutors.
Taipei prosecutors today said they have already provided details of the case in a news release earlier.
No further information regarding the hackers’ motives or their statements can be released at this time, as the investigation remains ongoing, they said, declining to respond to the Mirror Media article.
The case is being investigated by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, which has named two RTI employees, Wu and a section supervisor surnamed Yue (岳), and an RTI contractor surnamed Huang (黃), as suspects.
The Taipei District Court on Friday last week granted bail of NT$100,000 to Yue, prohibiting him from leaving the country and ordering him to wear an electronic monitoring device. It also granted bail of NT$270,000 and NT$150,000 to Wu and Huang respectively.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS