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Central Government, Policy, Security

Taiwan fake govt web site saga remedied in one hour

By Captain Wang | 3 September 2009

The sabotage of a Taiwan government web site by hackers last month was dealt with by the authorities in just one hour, and the perpetrators have now been caught, according to Liu Tian-cai, Administrative Court Commissioner for the Central Personnel Administration (CPU), the agency that came under attack.

On August 11th, a fake homepage was created for a special web site launched by the CPU to advise public sectors workers on whether or not it was safe to go to work in the wake of devastating typhoons.

The phony page informed civil servants that it was still not safe to go to work in some areas of the country when, in fact, the CPU had given workers the all-clear.

“The attack took place at a busy time of day. But within one hour we had dealt with the situation; taken the fake web site down and issued a news release to clarify the correction information with the public,” said Liou Tian-cai.

The perpetrators have since been caught. A local criminal investigation determined that the motives of the hackers, who worked at a local computer company, were “purely mischievous”.

Liou said that there was no way of preventing similar incidents from happening in the future, but added that his agency would be on high alert to detect and deal with intruders as quickly as possible.

When asked how a similar situation would be dealt with in mainland China, Wang Jun, Under Secretary for the Yichang Municipal Government, said that a similar, three-pronged approach would be taken.

“We would inform the public of the truth of the matter through a variety of media channels,” he said. “Then we would trace the perpetrators, and look at ways we could strengthen network security to protect against future attacks.”

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