New | Cyberattack threatens to derail Hong Kong’s unofficial vote on universal suffrage
Distributed denial-of-service attacks disrupt popvote.hk website but organisers say they will hold physical ballot to measure support for one man, one vote
A cyberattack on a website organised to measure support for universal suffrage threatens to derail an unofficial referendum on democratic reform, a founder of Occupy Central said on Tuesday.
The website had received “billions of visits” in the run-up to the vote that starts on Friday, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, Occupy Central founder and associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said.
Such moves are known in computing as distributed denial-of-service attacks, which aim to overwhelm a website with requests so regular visitors can’t reach it.
“We are considering, if the online system does not work as planned, we may extend the voting time so that we can get as many votes as possible, as planned. We had hoped to get around 200,000 votes, even 300,000,” Tai said.
“Nothing will deter us from going on. We will continue.”