As the KMT’s chairmanship race heats up, allegations of foreign interference have emerged. National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) confirmed in an interview on Wednesday that they have found manipulated videos from mostly overseas accounts spreading misinformation about the election.

The election will take place this Saturday and sees six candidates in fierce competition. KMT Legislator Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) recently held a press conference accusing Chinese cyberattackers of manipulating a large number of videos in an attempt to influence the outcome of the race.

Tsai said that the NSB’s preliminary investigations indeed uncovered upwards of 1,000 videos discussing the issue. “More than 200 videos were distributed by the same 23 YouTube accounts, more than half of which were based outside of Taiwan. We are not at liberty to name which candidate the videos favor at this time, however, as doing so may influence the election outcome,” he said.

Public concern has been growing about whether the CCP has been expanding its infiltration operations via hacking or otherwise meddling in Taiwanese elections. Tsai said government networks currently face as many as 2.8 million cyberattacks daily; a common tactic involves stealing data, rewriting it, and then disseminating it to mislead the public and undermine trust in the government.

Tsai emphasized that the current National Security Act and Anti-Infiltration Act do not explicitly regulate foreign interference in internal party elections. The Cabinet recently met to discuss whether to strengthen the law accordingly. He said the NSB has already provided its input from a security perspective.