For diplomat Wang Qun, it is high-time to establish an international code of conduct on cyberspace. (Photo : Reuters)
After incorrect redirects have transpired for days due to a server malfunction, cyberspace experts warned that the country's Internet infrastructure is vulnerable to attacks from abroad.
In a report by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center released on Thursday, China has been experiencing a growing number of cyberattacks.
According to the non-governmental organization aimed at protecting the country's Internet safety, the attacks were mainly focused on government agencies, influential industrial firms and key Internet infrastructure.
The report stated that amid development in protection methods in general, "the risk level for basic Internet infrastructure remains high."
The center was able to find over 1,500 major security weaknesses from telecommunication carriers in 2014, a figure that is triple from the previous year's statistic.
Four days prior to the report release, Chinese mainland netizens have experienced difficulties in accessing websites that require Internet users to utilize their Facebook accounts to log in.
The online visitors were then incorrectly redirected to two addresses: the travel blog ptraveler.com and an open source software portal wpkg.org.
Some of the affected websites included yahoo.com.jp, cnn.com and the Emirates airline's official virtual home.
According to a senior staff member at the center said that the case was rather strange, citing the hackers' targeting of telecom carriers' server - an incident that "rarely happened before."
"China Telecom was the biggest victim because it is the largest Internet service provider. ... It is impossible to estimate the damage at the moment," the official added.
The coordination center revealed that the redirection could be rooted to some of Chinese servers being "contaminated" by malware from servers abroad. However, tracing the attack's source will be difficult as the process can be remotely handled, experts remarked.
Meanwhile, the affected sites were restored on Thursday afternoon.
Fudan University-affiliated researcher Shen Yi said that the country has always been a target of online hacking.
"The country lags far behind the West in building an anti-hacking system. When the worst happens, we cannot find an effective way to defend Internet safety," Shen pointed out.
Although the government has been stepping up its effort to improve China's cybersafety levels, its vulnerabilities can still be easily identified.
