Nearly half of recent cyberattacks on Taiwan firms AI-linked: MODA

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Nearly half of recent cyberattacks targeting more than 10 businesses and online platforms in Taiwan involved artificial intelligence (AI), with some attack traffic appearing to originate from Hong Kong, the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) said on Wednesday.

Taipei, Nov. 11 (CNA) Nearly half of recent cyberattacks targeting more than 10 businesses and online platforms in Taiwan involved artificial intelligence (AI), with some attack traffic appearing to originate from Hong Kong, the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) said on Wednesday.

The attacks affected more than 1 million personal records, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, and order details, officials told a news conference in Taipei.

Julius Huang (黃卓倫), an official at MODA's Administration for Cyber Security, said preliminary investigations linked nearly half the attacks to AI, with some involving ARTEX, a Chinese-developed automated tool used to test security weaknesses in systems or websites.

"AI helps hackers automatically find doors and try keys," Huang said, explaining that the technology allows attackers to exploit "security vulnerabilities," such as weak passwords and unpatched software, quicker and at lower cost.

No breaches of credit card or other payment information have been confirmed in the cases reviewed, added Huang, director of the Incident Notification and Response Division at MODA's cybersecurity administration.

Dennis Kung (龔化中), president of the National Institute of Cyber Security, said the latest wave began around mid-September, with the first cases reported in South Korea. The authorities had identified several attacks in Taiwan by Oct. 20, and the wave was still ongoing, he said.

Some attack traffic appeared to come from Hong Kong, while others were routed through servers in different countries, Kung said.

"If they came from within Taiwan, we would definitely catch them, but the cases we've seen so far have all come from overseas," he said.

Digital Affairs Minister Lin Yi-jing (林宜敬) cautioned that IP addresses traced to Hong Kong did not establish the hackers' actual locations.

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