China is world’s top hacking target, say officials

A Chinese government official has said that his country is the world’s leading target in hacking attacks.

In an interview with state media Zhou Yonglin, deputy chief of the operations department of the China National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) said that China suffered more hacking attacks than any other country.

"Compared with [Internet security issues in] the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea, it is very serious in China," he said.

He explained that last year 262,000 IP addresses in China were hit by trojans planted by nearly 165,000 overseas IP addresses.

"Those from the US ranked first, accounting for 16.61 percent," Zhou said.

He also rejected any knowledge of hacking attacks on Google that prompted the company’s ongoing conflict with the Chinese authorities. The search giant has apparently presented no evidence to CNCERT about the attacks.

"We have been hoping that Google will contact us so that we could have details on this issue and provide them help if necessary."

He said that CNCERT was working actively with USCERT and others to cut down on hacking attacks, citing a case last year concerning two US-registered domain names that were planting trojans on hundreds of Chinese websites.