Taiwan, the Presidency website offline during Nancy Pelosi’s visit: “the work of Chinese hackers”

During the awaited visit of US Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the island’s IT services were knocked out by a brutal attack. It is suspected that it is the work of Chinese hackers.

It is yet another show of strength – fortunately only symbolic – of China in protest against the visit of US politics. While the plane on which Pelosi was traveling was preparing to land in Taiwan , China had conducted a series of reckless ‘military exercises’, firing several blanks of anti-aeria and getting its fighter-bombers off the ground.

In the same hours, some sites of Taiwanese institutions were sent offline by a DDoS attack , probably carried out by some Chinese hacktivists – that is, hackers who act for political reasons, not formally linked to the Chinese government.

In particular, the Taiwanese presidency site was hit. The traffic – explains a government spokesman – came from outside national borders. The Taiwan Presidency site was bombed with 200 times more traffic than normal. According to institutional sources, the outages lasted about 20 minutes, after which the government technicians were able to restore the normal functions of the site. According to some other sources – including the Engadget site – the problems actually lasted much longer.

America’s solidarity with the 23 million people living in Taiwan has never been more important, today the world faces a choice: autocracy versus democracy

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tweeted Nancy Pelosi shortly before she landed on the island.