TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A recent uptick in cyber attacks against Taiwan websites by groups claiming to be pro-Russian have not had a major effect and websites targeted have recovered quickly, the digital ministry said on Saturday (Sept. 14).
Minister of Digital Affairs Huang Yen-nun (黃彥男) said at a press conference that recent denial of service (DoS) attacks against public and private websites in Taiwan have caused no major damage. He said there have been 45 attacks recently which groups have claimed responsibility for, and other countries are also being targeted.
Parliamentary secretary for the ministry Lin I-ching (林宜敬) explained that the DoS attacks only disrupt access to websites temporarily, and do not cause data to be stolen or lost. Lin said in most of the recent disruptions users will see pages have crashed, but they have not actually been hacked into, per UDN.
The ministry’s director of information security Hsieh Tsui-chuan (謝翠娟) said that intelligence regarding the attacks was received as early as Tuesday (Sept. 10), and information continues to be shared among government agencies. Hsieh said if there are a lot of attacks in the future a response based on measures developed during the presidential election will be taken.
Of the businesses that have been attacked, one third said the incidents caused no impact whatsoever, Hsieh said. She said it is understood private banks, public institutions including the tax and ports bureau, and science parks have been targeted.