Taiwan Indicts Perpetrators of RTI Cyberattacks

The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office indicted on Monday three individuals who supposedly launched a cyberattack on Radio Taiwan International (RTI). Two of the three were employees of RTI, while the third is an outside contractor of the radio station. The RTI cyberattacks are said to have occurred in September.

Engineer Wu Cheng-hsun (吳政勳), his manager, Yueh Chao-chu (岳昭莒), and Huang Fu-lin (黃富琳), a systems maintenance contractor for RTI, are the suspects in the RTI cyberattacks, according to the indictment document. The three are alleged to have been the perpetrators of an attack on RTI’s website in September, where they supposedly replaced the website banner with the flag of the People’s Republic of China, among other things. Wu also allegedly interfered with the parameters of the RTI website, changed its Japanese main page to show simplified Chinese or garbled characters, and interrupted the signal.

RTI Cyberattacks: How Were They Carried Out and What Are the Implications?

Based on the indictment document, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office is seeking at least three years of prison time as penalty for actions it deems as potentially provoking cross-strait tensions with the Mainland.

Prosecutors also claim that the RTI cyberattacks were planned meticulously and well in advance, with the three plotting their inside job actions way back in June. According to the prosecutors, Wu gave Huang high-level access to RTI’s website so the latter could provide technical support and delete records of Wu’s activities. Yueh, on the other hand, neither intervened nor reported the breach to his superiors, even when he was informed about the attack.

The RTI, incidentally, is the only government-run radio station in Taiwan that broadcasts to the international community. As such, according to the prosecutors, the RTI is classified as a level A key infrastructure based on the Regulations on Classification of Cyber Security Responsibility Levels (資通安全責任等級分級辦法). The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office is also claiming in the indictment that the actions of Wu, Huang, and Yueh not only disrupted RTI’s operations but also damaged its credibility.