taiwan

Taiwan encourages businesses to tighten cybersecurity as cyberattacks surge amid China war concerns.

Taiwan encourages businesses to tighten cybersecurity as cyberattacks surge amid China war concerns.

 

TAIWAN has asked the island’s businesses to enhance their cybersecurity in the next days, as the Taipei administration reported a record number of cyberattacks on their websites amid strained ties with China.

 

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was launched against Taiwan’s presidential office website on Tuesday. The site was down at one point, according to a statement from the office.

 

The statement underlined that access to the website was restored within roughly 20 minutes following the attack.

 

A spokeswoman subsequently indicated that Taiwanese government organizations were monitoring the situation in the face of “information warfare.”

 

On Tuesday, a government portal website and Taiwan’s foreign ministry website were both momentarily unavailable.

 

The foreign ministry stated in a statement that both websites had received up to 8.5 million traffic requests per minute from a “high number of IPs from China, Russia, and other regions.”

 

The attacks were still going on, according to the statement.

 

However, according to a cyber security research organization, the attacks were carried out by Chinese activist attackers rather than the Beijing government.

 

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DDoS attacks operate by diverting large amounts of internet traffic to certain servers in an attempt by “hacktivists” to knock them down.

 

The assaults were “uncoordinated” and “random,” according to Johannes Ullrich, Dean of Research at the SANS Technology Institute, a cybersecurity teaching and research organization.

 

On Tuesday, a government portal website and Taiwan’s foreign ministry website were both momentarily unavailable.

 

He stated: “These are disorganized, haphazard, and immoral attacks on websites used by Chinese hacktivists to spread their message.

 

“It usually lasts a few days, but they usually lose interest within a week.

 

“Many of the attacks are inspired by what is reported in the Chinese press,” says one source.

 

Mr Ullrich noted that the attack was launched from hundreds of thousands of IP addresses associated with machines registered in Chinese commercial internet space.

 

Since Friday, a similar cohort of Chinese IP addresses has been monitoring the internet for weaknesses, he noted.

 

This was not consistent with the regular behavior of Chinese hackers.

 

The attacks appear to have been planned on the eve of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

 

Ms. Pelosi’s visit has enraged Beijing, which claims control over the island.