Taiwanese government websites attacked during Pelosi’s visit

Key Taiwanese government websites were temporarily shut down by cyberattacks believed to be linked to China and Russia during the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Taipei said Thursday.

The websites of the President’s Office, the State Department and the government’s main English portal were attacked Tuesday night as Pelosi arrived for a landmark visit that infuriated Beijing.

China, which claims self-governing democratic Taiwan will one day be conquered as part of its territory, launched its largest-ever military drills around the island on Thursday in response.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry also said its website was down for an hour around midnight Wednesday due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

A DDoS is a simple disruption attack that overloads a website with requests for information. It’s not about hacking.

According to Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry, the attacks on its website and the government’s English portal were linked to Chinese and Russian IP addresses, which attempted to access the websites up to 8.5 million times per minute.

“As cyber attacks by foreign enemy forces can occur at any time, the State Department will remain vigilant,” spokeswoman Joanne Ou told reporters on Thursday.

The presidential office said it would step up its surveillance in the face of “hybrid information warfare by external forces.”

Taipei has accused Beijing of escalating cyberattacks since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen, who sees the island as a sovereign nation rather than part of China.

Officials have said that Taiwan government agencies face about five million cyber attacks and investigations every day.

In 2020, Taiwanese authorities said Chinese hackers infiltrated at least 10 Taiwanese government agencies and gained access to around 6,000 email accounts to steal data.