Hackers attack government, KMT websites in support of protests

[AnonOps]

Hackers attack government, KMT websites in support of protests

2015/08/03 17:46:57

(CNA file photo)

Taipei, Aug. 3 (CNA) The official website of the Ministry of Economic Affairs was one of several official websites that was hacked into and temporarily knocked out of service early Monday morning.

Hacker group Anonymous Asia launched its third wave of attacks in four days in what it claimed was a move to show solidarity with Taiwanese students protesting changes made to the guidelines for Taiwan's high school history curriculum.

Some of the protesting students have occupied the front courtyard of the Ministry of Education complex since Friday.

The organization launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack -- referring to crashing a website by overwhelming it with traffic -- on the official websites of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), the New Party, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the KMT's Taipei chapter, paralyzing the web sites for more than one hour.

The attack took place between 1:40 a.m. and 2:15 a.m.

Officials with the ministry's Information Management Center said the DDoS attack could have come from anywhere in the world and was nearly impossible to defend against.

But because the attack took place in the early hours of the morning, and its main purpose was to disrupt service, it did not have much of an impact.

The center said it is attacked every day by hackers looking "to steal information," but the ministry monitors the system around the clock, and the number of attacks has not increased dramatically in recent days.

Anonymous Asia launched DDoS attacks on the official websites of the Presidential Office, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Academy for Educational Research and Cti Tv on July 31 and August 2.

The students' demonstration at the Ministry of Education entered its fourth day on Monday.

The students are demonstrating against what they said are high school history textbook curriculum changes that present history "from the perspective of Chinese unification."

Some notable examples of the controversial modifications include the use of the term "Taiwan's retrocession", which opponents said is tinged with value judgment.

The original phrasing, which described the Nationalists as "taking over Taiwan" after the end of World War II, should be retained, they argued.

(By Milly Lin and Lilian Wu)