According to senior government officials, the Cyber Warfare Wing under the Information Communications and Electronics Army has established a new "Information Security Joint Defense Center" to protect the core systems of the national army and key national defense infrastructure. The picture shows Lieutenant General Mao Jianqiu, commander of the Information and Communications Technology Army, mobilizing hundreds of civilian information security experts to conduct large-scale critical infrastructure vulnerability penetration and offensive and defensive drills together with the military's internal cyber warfare personnel during the Hanguang exercise. (Photo: Provided by the Ministry of Defense)
[Reporter Luo Tianbin/Taipei Report] This newspaper exclusively reported in September this year that in order to comprehensively counter the covert infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party’s cyber army, the national military’s cyber defense has ushered in a major strategic transformation! The Information and Communications Command of the Ministry of National Defense allocated a budget of 95.93 million yuan to formally establish a new "National Army Cyber Hunting Team." According to a senior government official today, the Cyber Warfare Wing under the Information Communications and Electronics Army has established a new "Information Security Joint Defense Center" to protect the core systems of the national military and key national defense infrastructure. This unit is actively introducing the US military's actual combat training model and is expected to be formally established next year. By then, it will have 120 digital top combat personnel. The goal is to enable the trained officers and soldiers to have the same level of professional execution as the US military.
In the past, the national army's information security defense mostly fell into the traditional defense mode of "passive wall building." However, in the face of the increasingly evolving offensive of the Chinese Communist Party's cyber army, the information security army decided to take the initiative. Officials pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party's state-level hackers' infiltration methods into Taiwan in recent years have been extremely covert, with more than 50% of attacks directly "weaponizing" software and hardware vulnerabilities to bypass security verification. What’s even more troublesome is that enemy cyber forces are now using special tactics. After intrusion, they do not download malicious programs, but directly use legal management tools built into Microsoft and other systems to carry out their activities. This method of covering up illegality with legality allows them to lurk deep in the networks of national defense facilities for months or even years like invisible men.
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In addition to concealing its own trajectory, the Chinese Communist Party’s cyber army also frequently launches complex “supply chain attacks” and extends its black hands to external third-party manufacturers of core national defense systems. They use this springboard for remote maintenance to infiltrate in a roundabout way, and even hack into a large number of Taiwanese home routers or video cameras to form a botnet to obscure the source of the attack. According to the analysis of the national security unit, this type of operation is not for daily destruction, but for strategic "pre-deployment." The CCP’s intention is to paralyze Taiwan’s power grid, oil roads, and military-civilian communications in one fell swoop when a conflict breaks out across the Taiwan Strait.
The newly formed "Information Security Joint Defense Center" of the national army will completely change its tactics. It will no longer wait for the system to issue an alarm, but will launch active threat hunting like a "sea patrol." The picture shows a diagram of Chinese hackers. (AFP)
Senior officials said that in order to crack down on this hidden and lurking threat, the newly formed "Information Security Joint Defense Center" of the national army will completely change its tactics. It will no longer wait for the system to issue an alarm, but will launch an active threat hunt like a "sea patrol". The military plans to invite professional institutions and technical experts from the United States to come to Taiwan in person to provide highly practical and systematic education and training. This training will be completely consistent with the current combat thinking and operational specifications of the US military's Cyber Protection Team (CPT), and will introduce high-intensity drills on the digital range, allowing the Chinese military to eliminate network vulnerabilities before they are exploited by the enemy.
Officials pointed out that this plan not only represents the deepening of cross-border information security cooperation between Taiwan and the United States, but also is a key step in Taiwan's establishment of countermeasure capabilities in cyberspace. As the Information Security Joint Defense Center officially reaches its goal of 120 personnel next year, this group of elite digital special forces infused with actual combat experience from the U.S. military will build a strong digital defense Iron Curtain on the front line. In the future, no matter how the Chinese Communist Party’s cyber army disguises itself as part of the system, this high-standard network hunting team that is comparable to the U.S. military will be able to sift through billions of network traffic and eliminate potential hackers and backdoors.
