Sharp rise in online sabotage_美文_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Sharp rise in online sabotage

Team GhostShell, another hacktivist group, also threatened in June to infiltrate government, education and medical websites in China.

Although there is a threat from abroad, Zhou added that "it is possible that someone in China could control an IP address or server overseas to launch an online attack on Chinese websites and computers".

An emergency response team, a department under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has been monitoring the Internet since 1999.

Zhou said that some attacks are obvious, such as when a hacker "defaces" a Web page either to express an opinion or simply because they can.

Other attacks are aimed at spreading sophisticated malware codes that infect computers and install a "back door", he said.

"This allows a criminal to steal private information, infiltrate inner networks or use the malware as a proxy to attack other computers," the director said. "Back-door software is the most dangerous threat to online security as such attacks are hard to identify by webmasters and users."

According to the team's report, 12,950 overseas IP addresses controlled 15,638 Chinese websites using back-door software between January and June this year.

A criminal can install malware on an online store or forum to monitor operations andtransactions, and steal user accounts or passwords, Zhou said. This information can then be used in future fraud.