Government Websites More Vulnerable to Hacking

Approximately 35,000 websites in China's mainland were hacked last year, disclosed the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center (CNCERT/CC) at the annual meeting of computer network security operatives in August. Under attack were 4,635 government websites, or 10.3 percent of all government websites on the mainland, a 67.6 percent increase from 2009. A CNCERT/CC study finds that the flabby defense of government online entities can be generally attributed to poor technical design, slow response to security flaws and lacklustre and irregular maintenance. In 2010 CNERT/CC detected 480,000 Trojan IP ports, 221,000 of which were traced to sources outside China. The leading host country for the hackers involved is the U.S. (14.7 percent), trailed by India (eight percent). A lethal virus called the Zombie controlled 13,782 IP ports, of which 6,531 were in foreign territories, including the U.S. (21.7 percent), India (7.2 percent) and Turkey (5.7 percent).