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1 December 2022
Taiwan "Embassy" Twitter Gets Hacked
Guest Contributor: Ross Feingold
Note to Reader: This commentary was originally published in the China Times. Those interested in Taiwan cyber security issues see this post on China In Arms.
To view ALL of the Twitter hacks, the Screenshots are included at the end of this post.
Cognitive Warfare or Simply Hacked?
@RossFeingold
Ross Darrell Feingold is a lawyer and political risk analyst in Taipei, and the former Asia Chairman, Republicans Abroad.
While searching Twitter for news about Taiwan recently, the Twitter account of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Brunei Darussalam appeared in my Twitter feed. For reasons unknown, the profile photo is the logo of the Ripple payment system, and, mixed with re-tweets of Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweets, are tweets about cryptocurrency.
The account has a blue check mark, though Twitter’s blue check mark system has had its problems after Elon Musk took over the company.
Whatever the actual situation is, for it to continue at least ten days based on the publicly available tweets, makes this author wonder whether it can be included among the latest security failure at the agencies responsible for Taiwan’s national security and foreign relations.
At the National Security Bureau, earlier this year details of a trip taken by Director General Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) to Thailand were leaked, including his photo taken at the Bangkok airport immigration counter and the invoice of charges he incurred at his hotel in Bangkok. At the Ministry of National Defense Political Warfare Bureau, there was also a leak of eating and shopping details of Director Chien Shih-wei’s (簡士偉) trip to Hawaii. Recently, after a military officer was indicted by prosecutors for receiving bribes from China, the Ministry of National Defense Political Warfare Bureau was criticized because prosecutors, rather than the Political Warfare Bureau, discovered the case.
This follows other incidents in recent years. Members of President Tsai Ing-wen’s protection detail cigarette smuggled cigarettes in to Taiwan, when accompanying the president on overseas trips. A former Ministry of National Defense Military Intelligence Bureau director allegedly helped a friend’s daughter pass the bureau’s entrance exam. Last December after Nicaragua derecognized the Republic of China, the ambassador to Nicaragua failed to return to Taiwan and it was discovered he had become a Nicaragua citizen.
Usually these incidents are forgotten, as the Democratic Progressive Party majority in the Legislative Yuan shows limited willingness to pursue these matters further, and Chinese Nationalist Party legislators often prefer to criticize the central government via press conferences and banners, rather than conduct substantive investigations.
A failed strategy for the Democratic Progressive Party in the recent local election was to make the election about China. This included frequent use of the slogan Oppose China, Save Taiwan or claims that a local election would send message to the world (including the use of photos of President Tsai with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Democratic Progressive Party videos). After the 2018 local election in which the Chinese Nationalist Party did well and the Democratic Progress Party did poorly, many claimed it was because of China’s cognitive warfare though often based on weak evidence. It is also likely that such claims will be made again by certain persons both inside and outside Taiwan to explain why the Chinese Nationalist Party did well again in the 2022 local election. As part of such efforts, foreign journalists and scholars who visit Taiwan receive presentations about how well Taiwan fights cognitive warfare, even if the foreigners don’t realize they are being used as part of a “If First Sold Overseas, Can Then Re-Sell in Taiwan” (出口轉內銷) strategy for domestic political consumption.
The reality is slogans about China or democracy are not a substitute for the necessary work to safeguard Taiwan’s national security. The local election is over, but the presidential and Legislative Yuan election is in January 2024. Let’s hope Taiwan’s leaders can prioritize national security over politics.
We called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask them if they are aware of what is going on with the Taipei Economic Cultural Office in Brunei’s Twitter account, and after several hours, the ministry confirmed that the account was hacked.
Screenshots that show a mixture of re-tweets of tweets originally sent to MOFA headquarters' Twitter account, and, the Tweets about cryptocurrency. Also note the logo was changed to Ripple from a standard TECO logo:
END