CCTV9英语新闻：运营商网络安全意识不够

Junk text messages, crack calls...these are signs that your private information could have been leaked. A report on China's cyber security says that in the past year, 5.5 billion pieces of information could have been leaked from websites across China, but less than 10 percent of the loopholes through which leaks happen were sealed. For more, CCTV's Jin Yingqiao is with us in the studio.

 

Q1, Yingqiao, give us more on this. How alarming is this?

 

A1, It is an issue that many, many service providers and users are careless about, and one that needs urgent attention. The report was published by the cyber security company, 360. And it says that almost four percent of all websites in 2015 have loopholes. That's an increase of almost two-thirds on last year. These loopholes spread across various sectors: Enterprises, public institutions, governments, individuals and social organizations.

 

What have these websites done about it? We can see that that 6.5% of the websites run by enterprises have closed their loopholes a low rate, but it is the highest among the peers for government websites, the rate is the lowest almost two percent.

 

The reason: not enough awareness, and prevalent wishful thinking by many website operators. Some new emerging areas like Peer-to-Peer lending, and Online-to-Offline services especially so new features and profits come before security.

 

Some of the prominent cases: in the burgeoning smart car industry, Chinese car maker BYD was found to have a loophole that could be used by hackers to control a car's doors, engine and trunk without the owner's permit. And social insurances platforms across many provinces in China were found to have a number of loopholes that could keep information including ID, income and home address.

 

Q2, Also tell us more about the attacks made against websites. Where do the hackers come from and who's fighting them?

 

A1, The attackers could come from anywhere really but most actually come from within China itself. 360 says about nine in ten IP addresses are from China. Mostly from Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Beijing. The balance are from abroad most of them are from France and the United States.

 

To zoom in further, in China, IP addresses in Hangzhou, Beijing and Zhejiang fired the most attacks but, who is repelling them? They are what they call "white hat hackers" or "counter hackers", so to speak, who identify the loopholes and then alert the company.

 

On 360 there's a platform that allows these "good hackers" to post the loopholes they find, and then the administrator of the websites will be alerted the websites can pay their cash rewards to white hat hackers through the platform. The majority of the white hats were born after 1989.