TAIPEI, Jan 10: Investigators from Taiwan and the United States are probing a group of hackers that broke into a computer system in Taiwan and are suspected of supporting the Al Qaeda network, local media reported on Thursday.

The group, which calls itself GFORCE or GFORCE Pakistan, has previously tapped into computer systems at a Taiwan company as one of the starting points to launch Internet attacks on the US Department of Defense Web sites, according to the United Daily News, which quoted the island’s Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB).

GFORCE used a computer server at Ta Tung Information Enterprise to hack into the computer system of the US Department of Defense following the Sept 11 attacks and threatened to pass on secrets to the Al Qaeda, the report said. It also used the system to deface US government sites.

An attempt to use a server belonging to the Taiwan broadband Internet company GigaMedia to hack into US sites was prevented, according to the report.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) contacted Taiwan government investigators in November of last year seeking cooperation, and the island’s CIB on Wednesday forwarded its findings to the FBI, saying it would continue its investigation.—dpa