Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan has irked Beijing.
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Some 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan said their TVs were hacked to tell Nancy Pelosi to leave the island.
Taiwan’s Presidential Palace said it, too, was targeted by cyberattacks on Tuesday.
Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday, despite threats of a military response from Beijing.
Some 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan reported on Wednesday that their store TVs had been hacked by an “unknown source” to display messages telling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to leave the island, per local broadcaster TVBS.
“Warmonger Pelosi get out of Taiwan,” the messages read, according to photos sourced by TVBS.
—RoINTEL (@RoINTEL) August 3, 2022
The outlet reported that the affected stores included one outside the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament building, which Pelosi visited on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the 7-Eleven stores told TVBS that the displays had been tampered with by “an unknown source to broadcast the message.” “The manufacturer has been immediately requested to repair it, and the store is operating normally,” the spokesperson added.
The President Chain Store group, which operates 7-Eleven in Taiwan, did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s Presidential Palace said on Wednesday that the palace’s website was hit by an overseas DDOS attack with 200 times the regular cyberattack traffic it sees, according to an official statement.
“However, after being disposed of by the Presidential Palace, normal operations have resumed within 20 minutes,” the statement read.
According to Radio Taiwan International, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s ruling party said in a statement on Wednesday that the cyberattacks on the government and 7-Eleven stores were “unilaterally raising the situation in the Taiwan Strait.”
The statement also accused China’s ruling party of “unreasonable bullying” and “one-sided military action,” and said the international community shouldn’t accept Beijing’s countermeasures.
Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday evening in the face of multiple threats from China, including a warning that Beijing may respond with military force. Her trip made her the highest-rank US official to visit the island since 1997, when then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich traveled there.
In response to Pelosi’s trip, China has announced live-fire drills around Taiwan from Thursday to Sunday. Beijing also announced that it would ban food imports from Taiwan, potentially wiping out billions in trade value for Taipei.