The website of Taiwan’s presidential office went dark today due to an alleged distributed denial-of-service attack, with other government websites also impacted, MSN reports.
The attack took place hours ahead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. The Chinese government threatened to take action to respond to the trip, and Taiwan is reportedly readying air raid shelters in anticipation of a potential Chinese attack.
Taiwan Presidential Office spokesperson Chang Tun-Han confirmed the DDoS attack on the office in a post on Facebook, noting that the DDoS attack consisted of 200 times more traffic to the website than normal, and it was carried out by a group from outside Taiwan.
NBC News reported that other Taiwanese government sites were also down ahead of Pelosi’s visit, including the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the website of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, where Pelosi’s plane landed.
All three websites are now up and running. Doug Madory, director of Internet Analysis at traffic monitoring group Kentik, said Tuesday that his company had tracked the attacks on the three websites, describing the DDoS incidents as “effective even if they were not record-breaking.”
This reminds me of Iran’s ‘retaliation’ to the killing of Suleimani. Mostly bark, minimum bite.
The gloves are off.