Unfortunately, Taiwan is a popular target for cybercrime. With the development of AI, the number of hackers and frequency of attacks has significantly increased in recent years.
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Do you know how safe your internet activity is?
According to Microsoft's latest annual digital defense report, Taiwan has jumped to second place in the Asia Pacific region for cybercrime, second only to South Korea.
The country is seeing increasing numbers of internet fraud cases that steal personal information through e-commerce websites or sell high-priced counterfeit items via fake accounts. Another form of cyberattack is to access information about a person or an organization and change it. Last year, during Nancy Pelosi’s visit, the website of National Taiwan University was hacked and modified to display, “There is only one China in the world.”
However, high-tech attacks are happening all over the world. According to statistics, Ukraine has been most affected in Europe, Israel in the Middle East, and South Korea in the Asia-Pacific region, with Taiwan coming in second.
The report also states that China is expanding its cyber espionage, focusing on intelligence gathering. Some of this includes the theft of information, secret monitoring of communications, and the subtle manipulation of political propaganda.
AI expert Liu Yen-po (劉彥伯) says that due to generative AI innovation, fake accounts take on real-looking appearances and descriptions and look more credible than before. AI can also generate relevant posts and images which can effectively increase the spread of fake information, proving technology to be a double-edged sword.