Ministry: Hackers stole ‘sensitive’ data from Taiwan telecom giant

Hackers stole “sensitive information”, including military and government documents, from Taiwan’s largest telecom company and sold it on the dark web, the island’s national defence ministry has said.

The confirmation of the democratic island’s latest major data leak followed a report by news channel TVBS on the hack of telecom giant Chunghwa Telecom.

That report included a screenshot of a post in which hackers announced they were “selling

Chunghwa Telecom 1.7 TeraBytes of data” that included government contracts.

“The initial analysis of this case is that hackers obtained Chunghwa Telecom’s sensitive information and sold it on the dark web, including documents from the armed forces, foreign affairs ministry, coast guard and other units,” the defence ministry confirmed in a statement yesterday.

Taiwan is one of the world’s top targets for cybersecurity attacks, according to digital data experts.

Some have suggested that tactics employed against Taiwanese infrastructure bear the hallmarks of Chinese state-sponsored groups.

Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control.

Taiwan’s defence ministry added that an air force contract included in the Chunghwa leak was “not confidential information, thus (there was) no information leakage.”

Correspondence between the navy department and Chunghwa also contained no classified information, the ministry said.

“We have asked the contractor involved to strengthen its information security control to prevent any further incidents,” it said.

Neither the ministry statement nor the TVBS report identified the hackers or said where they were located.

Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry declined to comment on the leak.