Hillicon Valley — Cyberattack hits Taiwan’s presidential office

by Rebecca Klar and Ines Kagubare - 08/02/22 6:41 PM ET

A cyberattack hit Tawain’s presidential office on Tuesday, coinciding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit to the island.

Meanwhile, a San Francisco-based crypto firm lost $190 million worth of cryptocurrency in a series of thefts.

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Taiwan hit with cyberattack

Taiwan’s presidential office was hit with a cyberattack on Tuesday, the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited the island amid warnings and opposition from China.

A spokesperson for Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said in a Facebook post that the attack happened around 5:15 p.m. local time, causing 200 times more than normal weekday website traffic.

NBC reported that attacks affected at least four websites, those of Tsai, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Taiwan Taoyuan International, the island’s largest airport.

The spokesperson said on Facebook that the attacks were “outside-border” distributed denials of service, in which a service or network is overwhelmed with more internet traffic than it can handle.

Hackers target US crypto firm

Nomad, a San Francisco-based crypto firm, has lost $190 million worth of its digital currency in a series of thefts, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.

The crypto firm said on Twitter that it was “aware of the incident” and was investigating the matter.

“We are working around the clock to address the situation and have notified law enforcement and retained leading firms for blockchain intelligence and forensics,” Nomad said.
“Our goal is to identify the accounts involved and to trace and recover the funds,” the firm added.

One more thing: DOD ‘wiped’ Trump leaders’ phones

The Department of Defense (DOD) failed to retain text messages from a number of its top officials relating to Jan. 6 because it wiped their phones during the transition, a watchdog group that sued for the records disclosed Tuesday.

American Oversight filed a public records request for the communications of former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy in the days after the attack on the Capitol.

But it was informed during litigation that the records were not preserved.

“DOD and Army conveyed to Plaintiff that when an employee separates from DOD or Army he or she turns in the government-issued phone, and the phone is wiped. For those custodians no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched,” the agencies wrote in a March court filing.