SAFETY COMPROMISED: The emails of professors at a university who work in diplomacy, politics and cross-strait relations have been spied on for three years

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 08, 2019
By: Dennis Xie  /  Staff writer, with CNA

The e-mails of more than 10 academics who specialize in cross-strait relations at National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) have been spied on for as long as three years, an academic colleague said on condition of anonymity.

The source said that since the second half of 2016, an unknown person disguised as a senior official at the school has been reading the e-mails of more than 10 academics, with the fake accounts able to be created due to loopholes in the university’s Open Webmail system.

Targeted academics include all the professors at the Institute of Political Science, as well as certain professors at the Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies and the department of political cconomy who are active in the realm of cross-strait affairs and public policy in Taiwan, the source said.

The hacker was discovered logging in from Internet Protocol addresses in the US, China and Hong Kong, the source said, adding that these addresses were possibly created via a virtual private network (VPN).    [FULL  STORY]