China's flag placed on Taiwan govt websites by hackers amid tensions post Pelosi's visit

Following the trip of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan which has escalated already sour tensions between Taipei and Beijing, Chinese hackers have recently placed the flag of China on several local government agencies’ websites. According to a Taiwan News report, at the time when China began its live-fire drills around Taiwan on Thursday, a Kaohsiung government website was covered with an image of China's flag for more than 10 hours. This incident took place from late Friday to Saturday morning. 

On Friday morning, August 5, it was revealed that on August 2, 4, and 5, the website of Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefly went down. According to the ministry, there was an effort to crash the server via brute force, with up to 17 million access attempts made every minute from various Chinese and Russian IP addresses, Taiwan News reported. And due to this, central government agencies were instructed to maintain a high level of alertness for unlawful online behaviour. 

Chinese hackers hijacked Taiwan govt website

According to people with knowledge of the situation, key government departments have been instructed to monitor websites and report issues to the Cabinet every hour from Friday until midday on Monday, August 8. Websites that have been hacked must be taken down right away, as per the emergency response rules released by the Cabinet on Friday. 

Additionally, the Ministry of Education advised schools countrywide on Saturday, August 6, of its own emergency response regulations to safeguard cybersecurity, requiring hourly updates and 24-hour security monitoring of each school website until next Monday. 

Besides this, after its website was briefly taken offline on August 4, Thursday due to cyberattacks, the Taiwanese Defence Ministry declared that the administration is closely collaborating with other authorities to boost cyber security. A slew of government websites, including the Presidential office, was also the subject of foreign cyberattacks earlier this week, some of which, as per officials, were launched by China and Russia, The Guardian reported. 

Taiwan's Presidential Office said on Tuesday that at around 5:15 p.m. (local time), it had been subjected to an international Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) assault, as per media reports. The Presidential office further reported that the amount of traffic on its official website was 200 times more than on a typical day, leading the website to go down for 20 minutes. The event occurred just before Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, which prompted serious warnings from China. 

Meanwhile, Taiwan declared on Wednesday that the military had increased its degree of awareness and that steps had been taken to protect the safety and stability of the area around the island in response to China's declaration of a series of military exercises in response to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. During a news briefing, the Taiwan Defense Ministry said that China continues to wage psychological warfare against Taiwan and its citizens. 

(Image: AP)