Epoch Times Websites Targeted in Suspected CCP-Linked Cyber Attack

The Epoch Times’ websites have again been targeted in a coordinated mass cyber attack.

Readers and supporters around the world reported they were unable to access The Epoch Times’ Chinese and English language websites starting around 5 p.m. ET on July 20.

According to the head of the company’s technology department, the incident was a denial-of-service (DoS) attack using tens of thousands of compromised computers with IPs located around the world to overwhelm The Epoch Times’ servers.

“The large-scale, coordinated attack attempted to exhaust Epoch Times web servers’ computing and bandwidth resources to impact their ability to serve legitimate users,” The Epoch Times tech chief said.

The large volume attack—which particularly targeted The Epoch Times’ Chinese language website—lasted more than four hours.

The attacks started a few days earlier but peaked on July 20—a sensitive date for China’s ruling regime.

On this day in 1999, the then-leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared a deadly campaign to eradicate a popular spiritual practice in China called Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners who had fled to the United States established The Epoch Times in 2000 to warn the world of the CCP’s ongoing human rights atrocities.

Every year on July 20, The Epoch Times publishes news and updates about the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong. When the persecution started, the estimated one in 13 Chinese people who were practicing the spiritual discipline were made enemies of the state overnight.

A large but unknown number of practitioners have since been illegally coerced, detained, brainwashed, tortured, or killed for their beliefs. Many have been victims of the CCP’s live organ harvesting crimes, first reported occurring in state-run hospitals.

Political figures from various countries expressed their support for Falun Gong—a spiritual self-improvement practice that teaches practitioners to live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—on the anniversary. The U.S. State Department issued a statement calling on the CCP to stop suppressing Falun Gong and release all those imprisoned for their beliefs.

The Epoch Times’ technology department said the company believes the DoS attack on July 20 is linked to the CCP.

“The Chinese Communist Party chose this day to attack the Epoch Times website, highlighting its fear of the widespread broadcast of the truth about 7/20,” the department head said.

Such a cyberattack on The Epoch Times is not uncommon. CCP hackers have been consistently attacking the Chinese and English Epoch Times websites since the company’s establishment in 2000, particularly around key dates or important political events in China.

In April, a U.S. intelligence agency told The Epoch Times that it had traced a similar cyber attack to the CCP.

That attack occurred on another sensitive date related to Falun Gong—the 25th anniversary of a peaceful petition in Beijing by tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners at the Chinese enclave for senior CCP leaders, Zhongnanhai, on April 25, 1999—the largest such gathering since the Tiananmen Square massacre.