‘Hackers stole sensitive information from Taiwan’s largest telecom provider, including military and official government documents which they later sold on the dark web’, said the self-governed island nation’s Ministry of National Defence.
The confirmation of the island’s latest data leak was followed by a report by a local media TVBS about the hack of telecom giant Chunghwa Telecom.
The report included a screenshot from a post in which hackers declared they were selling Chunghwa Telecom 1.7 TeraBytes of data including government contracts.
“The initial analysis of this case is that hackers got 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 as per news agency AFP.
‘The Air Force contract which was a part of the Chunghwa leak was not confidential information as there was no information leakage’, stated Taiwan’s defence ministry.
The Ministry said, ‘It also said that the correspondence between the Navy Department and Chunghwa did not include any classified information’.
“We have asked the contractor involved to strengthen its information security control to prevent any further incidents,” it said.
Neither the ministry in its statement nor the report by TVBS identified the hackers nor specified where they were located. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not comment on the development.
Chunghwa in its statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday announced, ‘It had conducted investigations to clarify the cause of the suspected incident’.
“Currently, there is no significant impact on the Company’s operations,” it said, referring to potential losses from the data theft.
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