On March 29, 2021, the website of the Inter-Parliamentary Union on China Policy (IPAC) was paralyzed for nine hours due to a suspected cyber attack from Beijing, and its president Reinhard Bütikofer was placed on the top of the Communist Party’s sanctions list against Europe.
The official website of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition on China Policy (IPAC), an international organization of more than 200 cross-party parliamentarians from 20 countries and the European Parliament, was attacked and forced to shut down for about nine hours. Members of the coalition accused Beijing of being behind the attack, criticized it for using “hacking” tactics to intimidate critics and said they would not be deterred. (By Wu Yitong/Cheng Wen)
“The official website of the Inter-Parliamentary Union on China Policy, which has been taking a strong stance against the Chinese Communist Party, was shut down for about nine hours on Monday (March 29) after a cyber attack known as a “denial of service” (DDoS).
“Luke de Pulford, the coalition’s coordinator and a member of the British Conservative Party’s Human Rights Committee, pointed the finger at China.
Robert Pritchard, a former cybersecurity expert at the U.K. Ministry of Defense, said the Chinese government owns the organization for DDoS attacks. Such attacks are clearly aimed at CCP critics, and are designed to prevent the public from accessing websites that are repugnant to the CCP government, or to disrupt the operation of those websites. While Beijing may be able to bring us down on the Internet for a few hours, nothing can stop our members from supporting Uighurs, Hong Kongers, and others oppressed by Xi Jinping,” he said in a media interview.
Speaking to the station, Green Party spokesman Bowser, a member of the coalition and a member of the German parliamentary human rights committee, said: “It is not yet certain whether the attack was state-managed, but if it was, it suggests that the Chinese Communist authorities want the Inter-Parliamentary Union on China Policy to remain silent.
Margarete Bause, spokesman for the Green Party of the German parliamentary human rights committee, said that if the attack from Beijing is true, the members of the “coalition” should redouble their efforts. (Bause’s Twitter picture / date taken unknown)
Mr. L, editor-in-chief of the overseas website “Chinawiki,” believes that the reason behind the incident is clearly a targeted cyber attack and harassment by the Chinese Communist Party’s state security department, as the Inter-Parliamentary Union on China Policy has become a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party.
DDoS is a common approach used by Chinese state security, and it is a sign of incompetence that they are unable or too lazy to penetrate the site and DDoS it, making it temporarily inaccessible but unable to destroy the content stored on the server,” Mr. L said. Simple measures such as upgrading the web server configuration and deploying Cloudflare Enterprise Edition can prevent it. The Chinese Communist Party will only be impotent and furious in the face of a forceful counterattack from anti-communists, making a mockery of the situation.
University of Technology Sydney professor Feng Chongyi told the station that as early as 2016, the media disclosed that China had set up a “strategic support force” and that the “General Staff Department Three”, the most powerful cyber espionage agency in the national security sector, had been incorporated into the department.
Feng Chongyi: Such a move by a rogue regime is not surprising at all, it is a persecution force directly from the state power. The original General Staff Department 3 is specialized in information warfare, specialized in training hackers, with its base in Shanghai, and they have a lot of funding.
According to Feng Chongyi, the “Transnational Parliamentary Alliance on China Policy” has members from many countries across the political spectrum, and such brutal attacks by the Chinese Communist Party will only strengthen the Western world’s resentment of the Chinese Communist regime.
Feng Chongyi said: “The IPU is not only transnational, but also cross-party, with the political spectrum ranging from the right to the left, and the attack on them will strengthen the antipathy against the Chinese Communist regime.
The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition on China Policy has notified the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the cyber attack. A spokesman for the NCSC said it is investigating the nature of the incident and is willing to provide technical support.
“The Inter-Parliamentary Coalition on China Policy (IPCC) was established in June last year to coordinate a joint response to the enormous challenge from China. Parliamentarians from 20 countries around the world have joined, with more than 200 members. They continue to focus on issues such as the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and call on Western countries to take a tougher stance against the Chinese Communist Party.
The first person on the EU sanctions list is Reinhard Butikofer, co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Union on China Policy and chair of the EU Parliamentary Group on China, who announced sanctions against the Chinese Communist Party last month, followed by Chinese counter-sanctions.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has officially referred to the coalition as a “nuisance coalition” and has recently increased its criticism of the organization. After the coalition’s co-chair and members were placed on China’s sanctions list last month, coalition member Bowser said the sanctions would only “make us redouble our efforts and confirm that the Communist authorities’ worst fears are true.”
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