Hong Kong Protester Forum Says Some DDoS Attacks Came From China

An online service used by Hong Kong demonstrators said a large digital attack that knocked out its servers briefly over the weekend was unprecedented and originated in some cases from websites in China. From a report: LIHKG, a forum that’s been used for organizing mass rallies in Hong Kong, posted a statement online after it was the target of what’s known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack, or a flood of traffic that disables a site by overwhelming its computers. Total requests to the site hit 1.5 billion and unique visitors surged to 6.5 million per hour, the group said. “We have reasons to believe that there is a power, or even a national level power behind to organize such attacks as botnet from all over the world were manipulated in launching this attack,” the statement read. The Hong Kong protests began in June over a bill allowing extraditions to mainland China and have evolved into a wider push against Beijing’s expanding control over the city. Participants, often under the controversial slogan “Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times,” have used digital services like LIHKG and Telegram to organize secretly. Digital Attack Map, which provides information on daily cyber attacks around the world, showed the financial hub at the heart of a DDoS attack in recent days, as protesters clashed with police.