In a shocking revelation of its kind Akamai Technologies has stated that Chinese are targeting ‘Microsoft db’ for cyber attack mounted on systems across the world.
Internet services company Akamai Technologies has identified China as the world’s main source of cyber attack traffic, according to a report released today.
The findings say the number of these incidents involving a cyber attack has been increasing. Last year, between July and September, about one third of cyber attacks were found to come from China. That’s double the percentage of the previous quarter.
A specific Microsoft database system seems to be the main target for such cyber attack.
The report from Akamai also said China has been the number one source of cyber attack since 2011.
The report says the other two main sources of cyber attack are the United States and Russia.
Tony Kirkham, senior consultant, with Palo Alto Networks ANZ said Australia was seeing an increase in cyber-attacks which were highly targeted and individually focused, often stemming from international criminal syndicates – or even government-backed espionage.
“We know many enterprises are inadequately protected against this class of activity. We have deep concerns around the adequacy of the security of industrial control systems, in particular those in public utilities,” he said.
“Additionally, confidential corporate information is highly valuable to these criminal entities. In this context, we welcome the expanded focus on cyber security from the Federal government.”
Curtain University Professor Mihai Lazarescu said cyber security was often completely ignored in Australia with the prevailing view that everything would be fine.
“In my opinion, we are still well behind in terms of awareness, and vastly behind the US and Europe in terms of the resources invested in dealing with cyber security training and research.
“I have been to a cyber security advanced course held in Washington and a number of things stood out, including the high interest, the high number of participants from government organisations, and the number of private companies who attended as part of their company policy. This is in contrast with Australia where cyber security is often completely ignored and the prevailing view is that everything will somehow still be fine.”
Professor Lazarescue said the focus of the national strategy on China was understandable because it had the potential to deploy more people in computing than anyone else and this would only increase over time as they would have more computing graduates than any other country.
“The reality however is that China is not the only threat out there – some of the most effective criminal groups operate out of Eastern Europe and they have the level of expertise that is rarely matched anywhere in the world.