Cyberattack on Guangzhou tech firm linked to DPP

A recent cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, has been traced back to a hacker group affiliated with Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, according to police investigation.

The public security bureau in the city's Tianhe district released the results of the investigation on Tuesday, stating that it will continue to dismantle the criminal gangs and masterminds involved.

Current investigation also showed that the hacker group from Taiwan frequently used open-source tools to conduct extensive probes on more than 1,000 critical network systems across over 10 provinces on the Chinese mainland. These systems included those related to the military, energy, hydropower, transportation and government sectors.

The group collected basic system information and technical intelligence, and launched multiple cyberattacks using various methods, such as mass phishing email campaigns, exploiting known vulnerabilities, brute-force password cracking, and deploying rudimentary homemade Trojan programs.

Over the past year, the scale and frequency of the group's attacks on mainland targets have increased significantly, the bureau said, adding that it clearly demonstrates its malicious intent to disrupt and destroy.

Technical staff from the bureau noted that the organization's homemade Trojan programs were poorly coded, leaving numerous traceable clues that enabled police to trace the criminal activities, identify the suspects and pinpoint their online locations.

Despite the organization's attempts to obscure its true origin by using a multitude of IP addresses from countries including the United States, France, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, Israel and Poland, a thorough cyber-investigation easily unraveled the entire course of its cyberattacks and revealed its true intentions, the technicians added.

The latest online attack on the Guangzhou-based tech company was disclosed by the bureau last week. The police called it a large-scale, organized assault that bore clear characteristics of cyber warfare and was far beyond the capabilities of ordinary hackers.

"Cybersecurity is crucial to national security and the basic interests of the people," the bureau said, encouraging the public to report any online threats to the police in a timely manner.