Attacks on Taiwan Websites Likely Work of Chinese 'Hacktivists'

Digital attacks against Taiwanese government websites ahead of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's arrival in Tapei on Tuesday were likely launched by Chinese activist hackers rather than the Chinese government, a cybersecurity research organisation said. From a report: The website of Taiwan's presidential office was targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday and was at one point malfunctioning, the office said in a statement. Access to the website was restored within about 20 minutes of the attack, the statement said. Taiwanese government agencies were monitoring the situation in the face of "information warfare," a spokesperson later added. A government portal website and Taiwan's foreign ministry website were also temporarily taken offline on Tuesday. In a statement, the foreign ministry said both websites had been hit with up to 8.5 million traffic requests a minute from a "large number of IPs from China, Russia and other places."

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