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Apple Daily chairman accuses Beijing of denial of service attack

The chairman of Next Media which publishes Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong newspaper known for being critical of China, has accused Beijing authorities of being behind a denial of service attack which brought down the publisher’s website on Wednesday.

Jimmy Lai Chi-ying today told the South China Morning Post that the Apple Daily website had been under attack for the past few days, before Wednesday’s attack led to a “total collapse” of the news site for a number of hours.

The controversy comes after a controversy broke out in Hong Kong with the publisher alleging that PLC and Standard Chartered pulled millions of dollars worth of advertising from Apple Daily because of pressure from Beijing.

Lai said Chinese authorities wanted to silence voices supporting the upcoming public vote on options for the chief executive election.

“There is no cause to be afraid. We will carry on with what we have been doing, with multimedia news, instant news…” Lai said noting the attack would not change Apple Daily’s editorial direction.

“Don’t be scared everyone. Come out and vote on June 22.”

A denial-of-service attack is where a website’s servers are deliberately overwhelmed by a massive number of demands to access the site causing the website to crash.

Read the South China Morning Post’s full story here.

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