TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Hackers from China have been turning their attention to electronic systems controlling traffic signals in Taiwan, a National Security Bureau report said Saturday.

Taiwan’s top intelligence agency as well as the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau, the Criminal Investigation Bureau and other security bodies are expected to present a report to the Legislative Yuan Monday about how the country can counter attempts from China to hack into sensitive information.

The United States and China recently traded accusations of hacking against each other, with Western media revealing the apparent headquarters of a Chinese military unit in Shanghai involved in cyberattacks against US organizations.

The NSB alleged in its report that China’s military has employed more than 100,000 Internet specialists and budgeted more than US$80 million (NT$2.36 billion) per year since 2002 on the cyberwarfare efforts.

The intelligence service said its web site was maliciously attacked an average of 209 times a day last year, but that all assaults were warded off. The total estimate of attacks came to 70,000 for all of 2012, but the NSB’s electronic network suffered a total of 3.34 million more general attempts at interference, though those mostly served to increase visitor traffic for the web site, officials said.

Chinese hackers were expanding their attention from government departments to control systems for traffic lights, broadband systems, industrial control networks and online storage systems, the NSB report noted.

The agency said the hackers were using ‘social network engineering’ to approach organizations and prominent people first and then use the connections to hack into their systems. Once they obtained control, the hackers could steal information, plant erroneous data or paralyze the Internet, the NSB report said.

Originally, China was mostly interested in government departments, the military, and Taiwanese government offices overseas, but now it was also hacking into the systems of private think tanks, cell phone service providers and subcontractors, according to the report.

In future, the hackers could well expand their attention to basic installations and private individuals. They were likely to collect information about the planning of political parties, economic and trade analysis, academic writings, and data about basic electronic and other infrastructure.

The NSB reportedly concluded that Taiwan needed to strengthen its basic online security and integrate government resources to improve the ability to track down the origin of cyberattacks.

