Overseas cyberattack shuts down 5 Macau government websites for 45 minutes
- Cybersecurity expert warns Hong Kong could be ‘wide open to being attacked at any given time’ as many organisations and companies do not have sufficient protection
An overseas cyberattack took five Macau government websites offline for 45 minutes and blocked a local internet service provider’s access to them for more than three hours, local authorities said on Thursday.
The Office of the Secretary for Security in Macau said its website, the Public Security Police Force, the Fire Services Bureau, the Public Security Forces Affairs Bureau of Macau and the Academy of Public Security Forces were shut down because of a “distributed denial-of-service attacks from overseas”.
Officials said the websites were hit at 8pm on Wednesday.
The security office said a criminal investigation had been launched to trace the source of the attack.
It took the departments and the city’s internet service providers 45 minutes to restore access to the affected websites.
But users of CTM, one of four internet service providers in Macau, were unable to access the sites until after 11pm, more than three hours after the attack was detected.
