Taiwan says China behind cyber attacks on government agencies, emails

Taipei: Taiwan said on Wednesday, China was behind cyber attacks in an 'infiltration' aiming to steal important data from the government.

Democratic Taiwan has been urging its people to be alert for what officials call an "omnipresent infiltration" from China, that includes Beijing-backed media campaigns and cyber attacks against the island that China considers its territory. "Basically, we found that some of the IP addresses and other login domains (of the hacking groups) are those malicious domains and IP addresses which some mainland hacking groups often use," said the deputy director of the Taiwan Investigation Bureau's Cyber Security Investigation Office, Liu Chia-zung.

"Using those service providers as a springboard of base stations, (the hacking groups) can attack our government agencies and obtain some important documents and material from our government agencies," Liu told reporters.

The attacks, which started as early as 2018, targeted at least 10 government agencies and the email accounts of some 6,000 officials, Liu's office said, adding it had not been able to identify what data has been stolen as the hackers had concealed their tracks.