China's network watchdog warns of malicious websites surge

China National Computer Network Emergency Technical Team (CNCERT) has alerted Chinese netizens that websites containing malicious software showed a sudden increase last week.

There were 5,087 IP addresses connected to servers in the Chinese mainland that were controlled by Trojan horse viruses last week, up 12 percent from the previous week, according to a network security weekly report released by the CNCERT.

The report said that more than 100 domain names registered in Poland with the suffix ".xorg.pl" and some other domain names suffixed ".cn" were being used to hack into Chinese Internet users' computers.

The websites containing malicious software were actively used by hackers, Liu Jun, an editor of the report, told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Despite the surge of the number of pernicious websites, the CNCERT rated last week's network security as "Good," the second highest level in its five-level rating system.

"This is due to a decline in Internet security accidents and no major cyber attacks to the mainframes around the country," Liu said.

Source: Xinhua