Rewterz Threat Alert – Taiwan Government Websites Hit With DDOS Attack During Nancy Pelosi’s Visit

Severity

High

Analysis Summary

During US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, major Taiwan government websites were temporarily forced offline by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Government English portals and websites of the Presidential office, and foreign and defense ministry were forced down due to the cyber attack.

The attack is believed to have been coordinated by threat actors with ties to China in retaliation for Nancy Pelosi’s visit.

According to Taiwan’s foreign ministry, the attacks occurred from IP addresses in China and Russia, and malicious traffic reached a maximum of 8.5 million times per minute.

“As cyber-attacks from foreign hostile forces could still occur at any time, the foreign ministry will continue to remain vigilant,” reported spokeswoman Joanne Ou.

Government entities in Taiwan, according to officials, experience almost five million cyberattacks and probes daily. Taiwan’s defense ministry has warned of an uptick in attacks on its systems by China-linked individuals.

Taiwan and China have been at odds over the sovereignty of the island, which China regards as a breakaway province. Taiwanese officials stated in 2020 that Chinese hackers hacked at least ten Taiwan government entities and gained access to around 6,000 email accounts in an attempt to steal data.

Impact

• Distributed Denial of Service

Remediation

• Customize your HTTP DDoS protection settings
• Upgrade your operating system.
• Don’t open files and links from unknown sources.
• Install and run anti-virus scans.