Taiwan faces 2.6m daily cyberattacks, minister says

• By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

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Taiwan faces about 2.6 million cybersecurity attacks every day, Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yin-ching (林宜敬) said yesterday, adding that hackers from China, North Korea, Iran and Russia frequently target the nation.

Lin made the remarks at an event hosted by the Digital Trust Association to launch the initiative designating Sept. 21 as Taiwan Cyber Day.

Cybersecurity needs to be guarded not only by the government but also by a resilient society, Lin said.

A man types on a computer on March 1, 2017.

Photo: Reuters

“Hackers, particularly in China, North Korea, Iran and Russia, show a special interest in Taiwan and launch online attacks daily,” he said.

On average, Taiwan counters more than 2.6 million cyberattacks per day, more than other Asia-Pacific nations. However, this also helped bolster Taiwan’s cybersecurity industry,” he said, adding that he hoped that the nation would turn the threat into a business opportunity, exporting the experience of countering cybersecurity threats overseas.

Aside from cybersecurity threats, Taiwan is targeted by scammers who use hybrid tactics, combining deepfake videos, fraudulent billing information and text messages to trick online users, National Security Bureau statistics show.

However, a recent study by Taiwan Network Information Center showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese never verify online information.

Although 70 percent of respondents said they could distinguish between genuine and artificial intelligence-generated content, only about 60 percent were able to accurately identify such content in a test.

Digital Trust Association chairwoman Nicole Chan (詹婷怡) said the Taiwan Cyber Day initiative aims to shift cybersecurity from a technical defense focused primarily on computer rooms and information-technology infrastructure to a broader effort involving the entire society.

People should discard the misconception that cybersecurity has nothing to do with them, Chan said, adding that “a mobile phone and a password are the first lines of defense for national security in the digital world.”

The society could build greater resilience against cyberthreats when information literacy and “digital immunity” become part of everyday practices, she said.

The association chose Sept. 21, Taiwan’s National Disaster Prevention Day, as Taiwan Cyber Day to extend the concept of physical disaster preparedness into the digital realm, she said.

The initiative’s official Web site provides cybersecurity and anti-fraud educational materials, case summaries and online quizzes, while also aggregating information on public activities.

Participating organizations include Coupang, Line Taiwan, Gogolook, the FIDO Alliance Taiwan Chapter, the Hacks in Taiwan Conference, the Taiwan Internet Governance Forum, the Institute for Information Industry and CYBERSEC, among others.