Expert: China among biggest victims of Internet attacks

China is one of the biggest victims of Internet network attacks in the world and has faced serious network security problems in recent years, said Du Yuejin, head of the National Network Information Institute for Security Technology, on Aug. 21.

Du, also the deputy associate engineer of the institute, said that he and his colleague commenced sample tests on data-stealing Trojan horse viruses annually in the past few years. They found that there were about 44,700 Chinese computers controlled by Trojans in 2006, but in 2009, the number of Trojan-controlled host IP addresses in China climbed to 26.2 million.

Du said there were nearly 165,000 overseas host addresses involved with these Trojan-controlled computers in China, of which 16.6 percent came from the United States.

"The test was just based on dozens of common Trojan viruses and the real situation is perhaps more serious," said Du Yuejin.

According to the survey conducted by the National Computer Network Emergency Coordination Center of China in 2006, at least 7.6 billion yuan in losses to Chinese netizens were caused by the underground network data-stealing chain, which included Trojan viruses and network data-stealing programs.

By Li Mu, People's Daily Online