from CHINA NEWS, 10 August 1999
Taiwan government contracts Internet firms to beef up security of government Web sites
The Control Yuan said yesterday it has contracted several specialist Internet companies to beef up security on government computer networks in the wake of Sunday's vandalism of three government web sites.
"We have started an investigation to see how government computer systems can better protect themselves against possible intruders and will present our findings sometime next week," said Control Yuan spokesman Hsieh Sung-chih.
Hsieh said the Control Yuan has contracted several Internet specialist companies to carry out the investigation and make recommendations and a final report. He declined to name the companies involved.
The main objective of the investigation is to find ways to protect government data from theft. One way to do this, Hsieh said, is to install firewalls, as the electronic defense systems are called, in different department networks, making it difficult for hackers to retrieve information.
On Sunday hackers broke into the web sites of the Control Yuan, the Construction and Planning Administration, and the Pingtung County Government, inserting the statement "Taiwan is an indivisible part of Chinese territory, and will always be!"
There were other attacks on several Taiwanese government and academic Web sites last week which had their Web pages erased and replaced by slogans stressing China's sovereignty over Taiwan and warning the island against taking any moves to split the motherland.
The cyber battle seemed escalate yesterday when a Taiwanese hacker was reported to have hacked into a mainland Chinese high-tech Internet site. A Republic of China flag along with the slogan "Reconquer, Reconquer, Reconquer the Mainland" were posted on the website. Below the slogan was a picture of Hello Kitty, Taiwan's favorite cartoon cat, and a cryptic message which read "Free Kevin."
A Chinese railroad Web site and a securities Web site were also hacked into in a similar way.
Hsieh said Sunday's break-in lent urgency to the need to develop standardized procedures to safeguard government documents.
"We have been thinking about this problem for a long time now, but Sunday's break-in caught us off guard and we had to act soon," he said.
Lee Hsiang-chen of the Cyber Crime Unit of the Criminal Investigation Bureau said his office was investigating Sunday's break-in.
"Because of nature of the Internet, it's going to be very difficult to determine who carried out this crime," he said. "Hackers are smart and will find ways to get back into a system and the key is to be one step ahead of them."
Andrew Yang of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies said the break-in was an important wake-up call for the island.
"The White House and Pentagon sites have been broken into, and this penetration shows that we are vulnerable too."
Yang said the real cause for concern should be that if hackers can bypass security and penetrate a site, they can do more than vandalize it or spread rumors.
"The biggest cause for concerns are theft of classified information or even sabotage of government networks," he said.
Rumors have also been posted on websites aimed at rattling confidence on the island as tension across the strait mounted. Last week a web site reported that a Chinese SU-27 jet downed a Taiwanese F-5E. The news turned out to be false and officials later disclosed that mainland Chinese money supported the site.
Copyright 1999 China News
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