China hit by ‘biggest ever’ cyber-attack

China has been hit by its biggest ever cyber-attack, causing multiple websites with a ‘.cn’ domain name to be taken offline for several hours.
The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack began at 2am local time on Sunday before becoming more severe at around 4am. Information about the attack was published on the China Internet Network Information Centre’s (CNNIC) website, along with an apology to any affected users. CNNIC has also promised to ‘enhance the service capabilities’ of the network that is responsible for the affected domains.

The CNNIC has said that they can’t yet be certain about the groups responsible for the attack, but the DDoS method is commonly used by many hacktivists worldwide. It works by flooding websites with excess traffic to disrupt their normal operation.

While DDoS and other hacking attacks aren’t particularly new to China, the country is frequently the focus for accusations of hacking from other nations, particularly the USA. A recent investigation by The New York Times alleged that Chinese hackers had repeatedly targeted their systems over a four-month period – an accusation that the Chinese foreign ministry described as ‘groundless’.

The ease with which the sites seem to have been disrupted has surprised some independent onlookers, with Matthew Aid, an independent analyst, commenting that, 'If all internet sites ending in .cn can be taken down by nothing more sophisticated than a conventional denial-of-service attack, the Chinese internet system is more vulnerable than we previously believed. Clearly Chinese cyber defences are not what they should be.' It's certainly an interesting revelation given how many of America's accusations rely on the extreme sophistication of Chinese governmental hacking capabilities.

Using the internet comes with an inherent risk of attacks, but there are methods individuals can use to help defend the data stored on their personal devices, like a VPN service. A VPN gives your computer an extra layer of security when online, helping to ensure that any malicious external forces are prevented from intercepting information.