Government Websites of China are Highly Prone to Cyberattacks

Xinhuanet.com published a survey report on 18th September, 2014 which was conducted by Chinese National computer virus Emergency Response Center stating that an increasing number of government organizations are going online and hence the security of their website domains are more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The center surveyed 2,714 government websites in 2013 and found 1,367 contained securities vulnerabilities which were 50.4% of the total. These security fallacies can facilitate the distribution of computer trojans and viruses among Internauts who visit these webpages which open the door to junk emails, also leaking private information of users.

More than 21,000 government websites were found carrying security risks with malware like phishing plug-ins, computer Trojan horses and theft of user information being the top culprits.

The survey also found that several government websites are coded poorly leaving loopholes which easily compromise the site and in many cases, the basic security measures like firewalls and anti-virus software were missing.

Ecns.cn published a statement on 19th September, 2014 quoting Tang Lan, Deputy Head of China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, as saying that there are two prime reasons why cybercriminals target a government website. First, some hackers distribute tainted message on government websites in an attempt to malign the image of the government body. Secondly, some cyber crooks hack government body websites to sell private details of users' to other online scammers to make money.

Hackers have successfully paralyzed websites of government or even altered them to display advertisements in the past. In one such case last year, that is 2013, a website of government was hacked so that it automatically redirected visitors to a porn site.

Ecns.cn published a statement on 19th September, 2014 quoting Qin An, Head of China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, as saying "I am not surprised with the statistics because Internet security industry in China is still less developed than other countries like United States."

He added that the government should invest more in cyber security industry to create more Internet security companies so that training could be given to more Internet specialists to develop the cyber security techniques.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/25/2014