Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak confirmed in a statement last night that due to cyberattacks “from overseas”, the websites of several entities under his portfolio could not be accessed from 8 p.m. yesterday.
As of midnight, however, all of the affected entities’ websites could be accessed again, as tested by the Post.
According to the statement, which was issued by the Secretariat for Security (GSS) at 10:30 p.m., the websites were hit by distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) from overseas.
According to the statement, the entities whose websites could not be accessed last night comprised Wong’s office (GSS), Public Security Police (PSP), Fire Services Bureau (CB), Macau Public Security Forces Affairs Bureau (DSFSM), and Macau Public Security Forces Academy (ESFSM).
Last night’s statement said that the authorities were working with telecom operators to carry out emergency response tasks with the aim of restoring the websites’ services as soon as possible.
Criminal investigation
The statement said that the Judiciary Police (PJ) have meanwhile launched a criminal investigation to identify the source of the cyberattacks.
As tested by the Post last night, the websites of the other four entities under Wong’s portfolio, namely the Unitary Police Service (SPU), Macau Customs Service, Judiciary Police (PJ), and Correctional Services Bureau (DSC), were not affected by cyberattacks so that all of them could be accessed last night.
According to specialist websites, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.
This screenshot taken late last night shows the Portuguese version of the Secretariat for Security’s (GSS) website, which could not be accessed last night but resumed to normal before midnight.
