Taiwan Reports Cyberattacks Doubled in 2024, Mostly From China

An unnamed Chinese hacker using his computer at their office in Dongguan in China's southern Guangdong Province on Aug. 4, 2020. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

Taiwan experienced a significant increase in cyberattacks against its government network last year, with incidents more than doubling to an average of 2.4 million daily, the island’s security bureau said on Jan. 5.

Most of the attacks are attributed to the Chinese cyber forces, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said in a summary of its analysis of China’s cyberattack techniques in 2024.

“Although many of those attacks have been effectively detected and blocked, the growing numbers of attacks pinpoint the increasingly severe nature of China’s hacking activities,” the agency said in a Jan. 5 press release.

Taiwan’s assessment comes amid heightened global scrutiny of Chinese cyberattacks, particularly following the recent revelation that U.S. government agencies and telecom providers were among those targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups.

The Taiwanese report said that Chinese hackers employed “increasingly sophisticated” tactics to target a wide range of government agencies and private sectors.

Among the affected entities were Taiwan’s civil servants’ emails and critical infrastructure, such as ports and highways, and the high-tech manufacturing industry, according to the report.

“Such efforts attempt to disrupt Taiwan’s government operations, as well as gain advantages in the fields of politics, military, technology, and economy,” it reads.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has never ruled Taiwan, views the self-governing democracy as a breakaway province and hasn’t ruled out the use of force to achieve what it calls “reunification” with the mainland.

As part of its comprehensive campaign to pressure Taiwan, the CCP frequently dispatches warplanes, warships, and even balloons across the Taiwan Strait while conducting large-scale military drills in the sea and airspace near Taiwan.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said China has combined cyberattack campaigns with military maneuvers, noting that while Beijing flexed military muscles, its cyber forces carried out a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Taiwan’s transportation and financial institutions, aiming at “intensifying the harassment effect and military intimidation.”

‘Weaponized’ Cyberattacks

The intensity of China’s cyberattacks has raised alarms among Taiwanese researchers.

Christina Chen, an assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei-based think tank funded by the Taiwanese government, said the CCP has effectively “weaponized” cyberattacks to infiltrate the critical infrastructure and communication networks of other countries, with Taiwan being the primary target.

“The scale of the CCP’s hacking against Taiwan far exceeds those directed at other countries,” Chen wrote in an analysis of China’s recent cyberattacks, published on Jan. 6.

Looking ahead, Chen expects the CCP to escalate its gray zone harassment tactics rather than carry out a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, especially given its economic challenges.

Taipei has already issued a warning about Beijing’s expanding cyber warfare capabilities, which are complemented by hybrid tactics that include military pressure, economic coercion, diplomatic isolation, and a relentless online disinformation campaign against the island.

A separate report by Taiwan’s national security agency reveals a 60 percent increase in the dissemination of false or biased information from the CCP, with a total of 2.16 million instances recorded last year alone.

The campaign’s purpose, according to the Taiwanese authorities, was to “undermine public confidence in the government and heighten social divisions.”

Social media platforms like Facebook and X have become key channels for the CCP to spread disinformation, along with some, such as TikTok, that explicitly target young people, according to the report published on Jan. 3.

Beijing employed “inauthentic accounts” to distribute its propaganda on YouTube, used technology such as artificial intelligence to create fake videos, and flooded the comments sections with pro-CCP statements, the report said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.