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.
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