Sharp rise in online sabotage

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Domestic networks facing serious threat from overseas, specialist says.

Online attacks on domestic networks, originating from IP addresses and servers in other countries and regions, have grown sharply this year, according to a government specialist who warns that Internet security faces increasing threats.

About 7.8 million computers were affected in 27,900 attacks, originating in other countries and regions, between January and June, according to the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team.

The United States hosted many of the overseas command and control servers used in the attacks (24.2 percent), followed by Japan (17.2 percent) and South Korea (11.4 percent), the team reported.

"Online attacks against our country are coming from outside our borders and the situation is growing more serious," said Zhou Yonglin, the team's administration and operation director, in an exclusive interview.

The number of computers affected so far this year almost equals the number caused by 47,000 attacks in 2011.

Hackers use IP addresses and servers overseas to infect networks with Trojan viruses and create Botnets, collections of compromised devices, Zhou said.

Authorities went on red alert in April when Anonymous, an international group of "hacktivists", said it planned to destroy 46 websites run by enterprises, including five in China.

That same month, hackers from the Philippines defaced several Chinese websites and left insulting messages amid a dispute between Beijing and Manila over Huangyan Island.

Team GhostShell, another hacktivist group, also threatened in June to infiltrate government, education and medical websites in China.

Although there is a threat from abroad, Zhou added that "it is possible that someone in China could control an IP address or server overseas to launch an online attack on Chinese websites and computers".

An emergency response team, a department under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has been monitoring the Internet since 1999.

Zhou said that some attacks are obvious, such as when a hacker "defaces" a Web page either to express an opinion or simply because they can.

Other attacks are aimed at spreading sophisticated malware codes that infect computers and install a "back door", he said.

"This allows a criminal to steal private information, infiltrate inner networks or use the malware as a proxy to attack other computers," the director said. "Back-door software is the most dangerous threat to online security as such attacks are hard to identify by webmasters and users."

According to the team's report, 12,950 overseas IP addresses controlled 15,638 Chinese websites using back-door software between January and June this year.

A criminal can install malware on an online store or forum to monitor operations andtransactions, and steal user accounts or passwords, Zhou said. This information can then be used in future fraud.

Some people also create fake versions of popular websites to dupe netizens into handing over money or private details.

Despite having the world's largest number of Web users, people on the Chinese mainland are relatively unaware about online security.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, almost 80 million of the country's538 million netizens are primary, middle or high school students.

About the broadcaster:

Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.