Five Taiwan brokerages report cyberattack threats

Unprecedented situation: Taiwan has never experienced a scenario where five companies were hit at one time with the same threat.

TAIPEI: Taiwan is investigating an unprecedented case of threats made to five brokerages by an alleged cyber-group seeking payment to avert an attack that could crash their websites, an investigator and the securities regulator said on Monday.

Rick Wang, an official with Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), said each brokerage had received an email setting a deadline for the transfer of funds to avoid a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.