Report: Foreign hacker attacks on China on the rise

Last year, 8.9 million computers in China were affected by cyber attacks, compared to 5 million the year before. This significant 78% rise was reported by China Daily, which quoted a recently released report by China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team and Coordination Center (CNCERT/CC). According to the bulletin, most of the attacks were traced back to Japan (22.8%) and the US (20.4%), as well as South Korea (7.1%).

The report goes on to note that most attacks were carried out in order to compromise servers, deface the content of web sites or steal internet users' private data. They said that foreign hackers modified the contents of more than 1,100 web sites, including 404 belonging to government agencies.

The CNCERT/CC's Zhou Yonglin is quoted as saying that trojans were often used to obtain users' data, and that financial gain wasn't the hackers' sole motivation. In some cases, criminals apparently tried to intrude into government networks in order to access sensitive information.

Zhou Yonglin went on to note that his team also registered more than 500 complaints from abroad about attacks on foreign networks that originated from Chinese territory. The report said that the researcher also emphasised that "Internet security is not one country's duty," adding that "It's a global issue".

(crve)