Travelers planning to go home during the Lunar New Year holidays had trouble booking a high speed rail ticket online yesterday morning, as hackers tried to prevent buyers from logging onto the system.
The online ticketing system of the Taiwan High Speed Rail Co(THSRC) was activated at 12am yesterday for those scheduled to travel between Feb. 1 and Feb. 12.
The Lunar New Year holidays begin on Feb. 6, or Lunar New Year's Eve, and ends on Feb. 11.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
However, interested buyers said they could not access the rail company's Web site.
THSRC spokesperson Ted Chia (賈先德) said yesterday that the firm's technical specialists later identified the problem as hackers attempting to block other requests, as some of the requests were sent simultaneously from the same Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
"By sending multiple requests at a time, they [hackers] succeeded in barring others from making reservations online," he said. "But by blocking these IP addresses, our system was able to resume operation at 2am."
Chia said that as of 6am yesterday, a total of 60,977 tickets had been sold online. Passengers can pick up the tickets on the day they are scheduled to leave.
Some frustrated buyers who could not log onto the system during the night were forced to go to the high speed rail station early yesterday morning to buy pre-sale tickets.
A passenger told a television news reporter that he had been trying to log onto the system since 11:50pm on Friday.
"I kept trying until 2am, but it [the system] kept saying the server was busy," he said.
As of 5pm, a total of 140,671 tickets had been sold, including 122,091 sold online. Many trains still have empty seats.
Chia said that many passengers logged onto the system early because they wanted to purchase tickets for some of the more popular time slots, such as the evening of Feb. 5.
He suggested that passengers try different ticket-booking techniques. For example, if they could not buy tickets all the way from Taipei to Kaohsiung, they could try purchasing a ticket from Taipei to Chiayi first and another ticket from Chiayi to Kaohsiung, he said.
Chia also said the company plans to launch a voice-booking system this year, but declined to specify when it would start.
Meanwhile, the Taiwan Railway Administration had announced earlier that the public can start booking tickets for Lunar New Year holidays on Jan. 19.
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday appealed to the authorities to release former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) from pretrial detention amid conflicting reports about his health. The TPP at a news conference on Thursday said that Ko should be released to a hospital for treatment, adding that he has blood in his urine and had spells of pain and nausea followed by vomiting over the past three months. Hsieh Yen-yau (謝炎堯), a retired professor of internal medicine and Ko’s former teacher, said that Ko’s symptoms aligned with gallstones, kidney inflammation and potentially dangerous heart conditions. Ko, charged with
RSS