Apple Daily and PopVote, independent news sites that have been covering — and supporting — Hong Kong's Occupy Central protests, are the latest victims of cyber attacks.
The websites have covered the protests since the movement began in September. Now, they've been "bombarded by attacks of unprecedented size," The International Business Times reports.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, a company that protects websites from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, told Forbes that the cyberattack is "larger than any attack we've ever seen." The attacks in Hong Kong reached 500 gigabits per second — higher than a February attack of 400 gigabits per second, which was considered the biggest attack in internet history at the time.
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The identity of the hackers remains unclear, though it's likely an individual or group that doesn't support Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. The DDoS attacks on the Hong Kong sites overwhelmed the sites with traffic, preventing legitimate visitors from accessing their content.