The recent United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has coincidentally overlapped with several unknown distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Taiwanese websites.
These attacks created speculations that China-sponsored threat groups are the culprit of the current cyberattacks against Taiwan.
Based on reports, the cybercriminal incident struck four significant websites owned by high-ranking entities such as the National Defence Ministry, Taiwan’s largest airport, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the Taiwanese Presidential website.
However, researchers are still yet unsure of the origin of the website; but the timing of it points toward China’s opposition to the US’s actions.
Unknown DDoS incidents were the cause of the nationwide website shortage.
According to several analyses, the website shutdown was the byproduct of distributed denial of service (DDoS). The adversaries immediately operated a surge of attacks against numerous Taiwan-owned computers.
The attacks caused several inconveniences to Taiwanese and other visitors since most essential websites were down and inaccessible.
Experts noted that DDoS campaigns are easier to operate for threat actors, and it does not cause lasting damage to the target. However, the operators of these attacks are hard to trace since it only requires minimal skill and inadequate infrastructure.
A Taiwanese presidential spokesperson said that their president’s website had been one of the victims of the DDoS attacks after they confirmed that it was inaccessible for their users.
Cybersecurity personnel could not immediately point fingers since hacktivist groups cause most DDoS attacks. In addition, some groups orchestrate these attacks to express that they do not favour recent activity.
There is a substantial allegation that China’s malicious threat groups are behind the DDoS attacks since they have been targeting Taiwan for several years. However, researchers cannot conclude or make a rash decision to blame everything on China since there is no current proof against the alleged country.
As of now, Taiwan should brace itself since these DDoS attacks may evolve into espionage campaigns if the tension between the US, Taiwan, and China escalates soon.
