The official website of Taiwan’s presidential office suffered a foreign cyber-attack on Tuesday ahead of Chairman Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the office said in a statement.
According to the statement, the site was attacked just hours before Ms. Pelosi’s landing at around 5 p.m. Traffic on the site shot up to 200 times as much as on a normal day, leaving the website unable to display any content for 20 minutes.
According to the statement, it resumed normal operation after the issues were resolved.
Historically, Taiwanese websites — particularly those of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party — have been targeted by Chinese hackers during critical moments, such as elections and crises. While it’s not clear whether the outages were related to Ms Pelosi’s trip, analysts have warned that cyberattacks could be accompanied by other attempts by China to voice its dismay at the visit.
At the end of Tuesday, the Taiwanese government’s main portal website also appeared to be down, although it was not immediately clear what had caused the outage.
A spokesman for the presidential office said it would continue to strengthen its oversight and ensure the security and stable operation of key infrastructure in the face of “ongoing compound intelligence operations by foreign forces”.
