China ramps up cyberattacks for potential election meddling: officials

WARNING: Beijing might leverage technology and its human resources to devise a strategy to influence next month’s elections, using fake polls and reports, the NSB said

• By Wu Che-hsuan and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

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The Government Service Network (GSN) reported a surge of 185.6 million cyberattacks in July, suggesting that Beijing could be preparing large-scale interference operations ahead of the Nov. 28 elections, government officials said.

Cyberattacks on the network, likely originating in China, spiked between June and last month, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said in a report submitted to the Legislative Yuan for a meeting scheduled for tomorrow.

As of last month, the GSN was attacked 2.58 million times a day on average, and the attacks reported in July exceeded the sum of total cyberattacks in the first quarter this year, the document said.

A man looks at his mobile phone as he walks past a computer advertisement in Taipei on Dec. 22, 2023.

Photo: I-hwa Cheng， AFP

Cyberattacks exceeded 100 million in three months last year: during the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration in April (100 million), in May (about 300 million) and during Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) visit to Europe in November (about 200 million), it said.

The NSB cannot rule out the possibility that the July attacks are part of Beijing’s plan to meddle in next month’s nine-in-one elections, the report said, adding that the agency had warned of the same in April.

Chinese hackers in the first half of the year targeted academic institutions, telecommunications and defense industry supply chains as part of a long war against Taiwan’s critical infrastructure, it said.

The attacks were aimed at disrupting Taiwan’s ability to govern and direct national defense policy, its collaboration with other governments and the theft of sensitive technology, it said.

Beijing-directed cyberwarfare continues to improve in sophistication and artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been deployed in hacks, it said.

AI is utilized across various stages of a cyberattack, including probing for weaknesses, target seeking, searching for zero-day exploits and malware attacks via e-mail, the report said.

Automation has increased Chinese hackers’ operational tempo and their efficiency in finding gaps in Taiwan’s defenses and identifying targets for infiltration, it said.

Meanwhile, the NSB said it believes that Beijing would leverage technology and human intelligence to craft a strategy to influence next month’s elections, targeting Taiwan’s domestic wedge issues such as energy, food safety and national defense, and using fake polls and reports about the races, and AI-generated content, it said.

Suspicious social media accounts made 2.5 million posts containing controversial or disputed information from January to last month, up 48 percent compared with 1.69 million in the same period last year, the report said.

The method and platform for spreading cognitive warfare posts included content farms, AI-generated video or audio content, and brigading the comment section on platforms, forums and other Web sites, it said.

Facebook and Threads accounted for 68.9 percent and 9 percent respectively of all controversial content from suspicious accounts, it said.

Suspicious posts on Facebook and Threads were up by 25.3 and 4.5 percentage points from last year respectively, indicating China’s increasing preference for using these platforms, the report said.

AI is playing an increasingly prominent role in Beijing’s informational operations, it said.

China’s strategy for manipulating Taiwanese public opinion follows the model of using official outlets to craft narratives, which are then amplified by troll, bot and public relations company-owned accounts, the report said.