from CHINA NEWS, 10 August 1999
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has speculated that the recent intrusion by computer hackers into a number of Taiwan government Web sites might have been orchestrated by China.
An MAC official questioned whether it was the start of a new strategy intended by Beijing to start a non-violent information war between the two sides.
Such thoughts were aired after a hacker with apparent political motives infiltrated the Web sites of the Control Yuan, National Taiwan University and the Pingtung County Government on Sunday.
Rumors circulated yesterday that the Web sites of the MAC and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) had also been illegally accessed. The MAC, however, denied the rumors.
Responding to the hacker intrusion, most Beijing and Hong Kong news media described it as an information war in protest of Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's redefinition of cross-strait relations as a "special state-to-state relationship." China and Hong Kong newspapers said Taiwan authorities were inadequately prepared to fight such an information war.
Meanwhile, SEF Deputy Secretary-General Jan Jyh-horng yesterday urged hackers in China to be ethical and not destroy public assets stored on Web sites.
If anyone has a comment to make, he or she should make it in the numerous chat rooms which exist on the Internet rather than hacking into and damaging public Web sites, Jan said.
"Web sites are public assets; any hacker, whether from Beijing or Taipei, who intrudes into others' sites and destroys them should be reprimanded and punished for his unlawful behavior," Jan said.
National Taiwan University Electronic Engineering Department Professor Lai Fei-hsiung criticized Taiwan hackers who apparently immediately launched hack attacks of their own on China Web sites. Lai said the hackers were immature and obviously bored.
Although scholars are confident that Taiwan has more sophisticated Internet experts than China, they suggested that the government set up a crisis handling center to prevent confidential documents from being destroyed.
Asked about potential intrusion by hackers into the data banks of Taiwan's financial and construction institutions, Finance Minister Paul Chiu said all related institutions had already installed firewall defenses in their systems to make it impossible for hackers to steal or destroy data.
The Institute for Information Industry agreed, saying it would be very difficult for hackers to steal confidential data from government agencies because all their computer networks are equipped with updated firewall defenses.
Copyright 1999 China News
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