by Brian Hioe

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English
Photo Credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0

THE MINISTRY OF Digital Affairs (MODA) highlighted weaknesses of government websites in a report last month.

According to the report, government websites are targeted by hackers in a number of ways. 52% of attacks were attempts at gathering data, while other attacks were aimed at invading government systems. Government websites are targeted by malware in emails disguised as petitions and are vulnerable to injection of malware, or sometimes face issues with access controls, allowing hackers to access parts of websites that should not be accessible to the general public, inclusive of files that should stay private. Otherwise, 47.5% of incidents are caused by issues with connecting to relay stations.

In this way, the MODA stated it had thwarted 83,105 cyberattacks. This is lower than the preceding month, which saw 13,070 more cyberattacks. The report highlighted that government employees do not necessarily do enough to maintain the security of government websites.

Taiwan has long faced issues with private information being leaked on the Internet. In 2023, news broke of a purported leak of the household registration for almost all Taiwanese citizens for sale on the dark web. The dataset was for household registration for 23.57 million pieces of information on household registration, apparently stolen from the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Household Registration, and was for sale on the BreachedForum website. The same account offering this dataset for sale was also selling 28.11 million pieces of information from the Bureau of Labor Insurance and 1.68 million pieces of stock exchange information.

To prove that the information is genuine, the dataset offered a sample of 200,000 entries. This purports to include information on the residences of government officials such as vice president William Lai, National Security Council Wellington Koo, and Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua. The Ministry of the Interior denied that the leak was up to date.

News of this leak took place at the same time as a police investigation into government workers at the National Health Insurance system who could have been responsible for leaks, with workers questioned over records they retained or overseas accounts they were found to have. It was suspected that National Health Insurance information could have potentially been sold to China.

The Ministry of Digital Affairs. Photo credit: Yu tptw/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0

Chinese United Front efforts have sometimes taken advantage of poor information security in Taiwan for attacks. For example, in one public incident, a Taiwanese NGO worker received a series of unusual phone calls from Chinese individuals claiming to be customer service from Eslite, questioning her about her purchase of a book by Puma Shen on Chinese invasion scenarios. As Eslite is known to have poor information security, this indicates that Chinese United Front efforts had obtained Eslite’s customer purchase information.

Otherwise, some attacks have been aimed at intimidation. Around the time of the August 2022 visit to Taiwan by then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, displays in high-speed rail stations and convenience stores were hacked to display pro-unification messages. Although this was meant to suggest that hackers could access Taiwanese systems at any time, such attacks may not have been sophisticated and may have simply taken advantage of weak passwords for displays. More generally, Taiwan has seen issues with online fraud, targeting young and old alike.

Despite that the report highlights security dangers for Taiwan and within the government, the KMT currently proposes to drastically cut the MODA’s budget. The KMT has taken aim at the MODA, seeing as the establishment of the digital ministry took place under the Tsai administration, and the DPP has emphasized its establishment as an accomplishment. The KMT has justified cutting the budget of the MODA on the basis of the claim that issues with online fraud have not been resolved in Taiwan, as a result of which the budget of the agency should be cut as punishment–in spite of that this suggests the agency may need more backing, rather than less support.

Still, if cuts to the budget of MODA leave Taiwan vulnerable to digital attacks, including those from China, this may be to the KMT’s benefit. This proves similar with regard to how Taiwan has increasingly had to deal with disconnected or cut submarine cables in recent years, sometimes suspected due to deliberate sabotage by China, and MODA is the responsible government body for such issues. 56% of relevant funding is to be cut with the budgetary revisions pushed for by the KMT.

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