TVB blames hackers for Miss HK pageant voting chaos
Collapse of online voting system after 14 million attempts to access TVB website jams server sees furious reaction from angry Hongkongers
Hackers have been blamed for the debacle that saw the first public vote for the winner of the Miss Hong Kong pageant scrapped.
The collapse of the online voting system left Hongkongers furious and was a humiliation for broadcaster TVB, which had marketed the show heavily as a historic event and the city's first taste of "universal suffrage".
TVB apologised and said the number of attempts to access the website and smartphone app it set up for the contest was more than double the population of the city - putting the total at more than 14 million - and the server was jammed 15 minutes before voting was even due to start.
Angry Hongkongers took to the internet to condemn the event as a farce, with many comparing it to the city's failure to secure a one-person, one-vote system for the election of its chief executive and legislative council.
TVB's general manager, Cheong Shin-keung said: "The large flow of page visit requests was abnormal. It was … deliberate acts - hacking."
The company plans to call in an independent information technology firm to help investigate and Cheong did not rule out reporting the case to the police once it had enough evidence to prove the problem was hacking.