China's top cyberspace watchdog has ordered some 26 online audio platforms to shut down or rectify their services for spreading content on pornography, historical nihilism and superstition. Photo: IC

More than 62 million samples of malicious computer programs were captured last year in China, with the US accounting for 53.5 percent of all overseas attacks, according to the 2019 China Internet Network Security Report released by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (CNCERT) on Tuesday.

"China should strengthen the protection of its critical information infrastructure and accelerate the construction of a cyberspace security guarantee system," said Zhang Ping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, during the online CNCERT Annual Conference 2020 on Wednesday.

More than half of overseas attacks came from the US, while Russia accounted for 2.9 percent and Canada 2.6 percent.

The average daily spread of malicious programs was 8.24 million.

More than 2.79 million new malicious programs were uploaded to the mobile internet in 2019, down 1.4 percent year-on-year, marking the first growth decline in the past five years.

In 2019, 5.82 million computers in China were infected by malicious programs, down 11.3 percent year-on-year. About 56,000 computer servers outside the Chinese mainland controlled malicious programs that infected about 5.52 million computer hosts in China. 

The US, Japan and Hong Kong were the countries and regions in which most servers were located, with the US accounting for 31.4 percent of servers. Servers located in the US, the Netherlands and France controlled the highest number of computers in China. US servers controlled 4.29 million Chinese computers in the year, accounting for 77.7 percent of the total.

As the international situation becomes more complex, the number of organized and politically motivated cyber attacks continues to rise. In recent years, APT attacks launched against China have been continuously exposed, with the scale and intensity of attacks increasing year by year, and targets including important departments and industries related to the national economy and people's livelihoods, according to CNCERT.

By the end of 2020, China will have gradually established an institutionalized, systematic and standardized data security management mechanism to speed up the implementation of data security compliance requirements.

New challenges have emerged with new technologies. 5G, IPv6 and blockchain technology have supported traditional industries and given rise to the development of smart industries. But it is urgent to study new risks and threats to the network, new types of attacks and defensive countermeasures.