Rise In Number Of Hacking Attacks In China Pose Challenge For Information Security Experts

By Author: Contact Press
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Over the recent years, China has made rapid progress in the domain of Information Technology. Security experts constantly warn of the growing Chinese prowess in cyber warfare. China is known to have made large investments to improve cyber education and to create a large force of cyber experts and warriors. At the same time, China is also facing challenges in IT security. According to a report, over the last four years, China has witnessed an annual increase of 80% in the number of computer hacking cases. Hackers target a wide range of user groups including individuals and websites of government, banking and financial institutions, educational institutes and infrastructure installations. As such, information security experts are faced with a constant challenge of ensuring privacy of customer and business information.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, one of the primary motivations behind hacking is stealing money. Again, hacking has become an organized activity with clearly defined roles and responsibilities ...
... for the participants such as developing hacking tools, initiating hacking attacks, stealing credentials, selling stolen account details to underground peers, team leaders to manage the group and even treasures to keep track of the money flow. The Ministry figures reveal that an alarming 8 out of every 10 computers with access to Internet in China have been controlled by botnets at a certain point of time. The figures are alarming and create the need for strengthening IT infrastructure. Ethical Hacking techniques can help organizations in identifying vulnerabilities and securing networks.

Recently, investigative authorities in China have cracked down on a hacking training website named Huaxia Hacking Union with a workforce of 10,000 members. A large amount of illegal money was recovered from the detained suspects. The suspects allegedly used to distribute botnets to gain remote access, intrude into unauthorized databases, thereby compromising data.

National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team / Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC) has identified over 1,27,0000 IP addresses suspected for remotely controlling computers in China.
Information Security Professionals in China emphasize on creating cyber security awareness among Internet users and employees to limit the number of threats.

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