China named 'world's biggest' cybercrime victim

China is the world's biggest victim of cybercrime according to the nation's Computer Emergency Response Team (CNCERT).

According to its 2011 Internet Security Perception Report (pdf), 8.9 million computers in China were attacked by 47,000 foreign IP addresses .

Most attacks originated from computers in the United States, Japan and South Korea, however those computers may form part of botnets with perpetrators located elsewhere.

Foreign hackers compromised 1116 Chinese websites, according to the report, while 95.8 per cent of phishing websites that targeted Chinese domestic banks came from overseas attackers.

The number of phishing sites targeting Chinese organisations nearly tripled compared to 2010.

More than 100 vulnerabilities were reported in China's National Vulnerability Database affecting industrial systems, a tenfold increase since 2010.

The CERT also reported 6249 malicious mobile programs had been discovered in 2011, more than double the year earlier.

But CNCERT said there were no major network security incidents, and attacks against government websites had declined.

Sophos senior security advisor Chester Wisniewski criticised the claim that China was the largest victim of cybercrime.

"At SophosLabs we detect more than 20,000 new infected URLs, not to mention receiving more than 100,000 new malicious code samples every single day," Wisniewski said. "Compare this to 1116 Chinese websites 'tampered with by overseas-based hackers' last year."

He pointed to a CNCERT weekly report that indicates 90 per cent of infected Chinese computers contained the Conficker worm.