US, main source of cyber intrusion into China  

Beijing (CNS) — Altogether 1.62 million host computers in the Chinese mainland have been targets of cyber attacks, mainly in the forms of trojans or botnets, among which 714,000 have been US-based control servers, according to statistics released by China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center (CNCERT), the country's top Internet security agency on Thursday.

A botnet (also known as a zombie army) is a number of Internet computers set up to forward transmissions (including spam or viruses) to other computers on the Internet. It is often used by cyber criminals to launch large-scale cyber attacks and to control information stored in the computers.

According to CNCERT, foreign-based hacking attempts against Chinese mainland computer networks mainly come from the United States, Hong Kong and South Korea. The US has been identified as the main source of all cyber attacks targeting Chinese mainland's computer systems, followed by Portugal and Hong Kong, which controlled 524,000 and 155,000 host computers on the mainland respectively.

In May, 4,107 Internet Protocol addresses (IPs) overseas exercised control over 7,612 websites on the Chinese mainland through backdoor software, among which the US, Indonesia and Hong Kong were the main controllers.

According to a network security report released by CNCERT, in 2012, foreign-based cyber attacks on Chinese computer networks remained serious, with online banking and industrial control systems being major victims.

The US has been identified as the "No. 1 country" waging cyber intrusions into host computers on the Chinese mainland in terms of the number of control servers it owns, the number of host computers it controls, and its trusted coverage of phishing websites.

According to media reports, before leaving Hong Kong, former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed new details about US surveillance activities, including hacking of Chinese mobile phone firms to gain access to millions of private text messages and the targeting of China's Tsinghua University.

"We feel grave concern about the recent disclosures of the US government's cyber attacks on China," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement. "This once again proves that China is a victim of cyber attacks."