Chinese Cyber Attack Statistics 2024

Chinese Cyber Attack Statistics: China was impressed by the US military and benefited from the application of the high technologies in the Gulf War. China began to get indications that there was no way to adequately defend itself without following the changes in the form of war. In this report, we will study in detail the Chinese Cyber-attack statistics.

As per the research, riotous cybercrimes by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are a growing warning to U.S. national security. Companies need to understand the need of the hour and solemnity of these attacks. China uses cyberattacks below the gateway of war to pressure its rivals. These attacks can affect Global Companies, Small businesses, and government agencies, may it be directly or via descend risks. In this report, we will be studying the Chinese Cyber Attack Statistics in detail.

Editor’s Choice

• An average of $4.35 million was the cost of data breaches of the businesses in 2022.
• Almost 236.1 million attacks occurred worldwide in the 1st half of 2022.
• Data breaches cost the business an average of $4.35 million in 2022.
• 39% of UK businesses in 2022 suffered from cyber-attacks.
• Phishing is the most common form of cybercrime threat.
• In 1st half of 2022, the US organizations of 53.35 million were affected.
• In 2020 malware attacks had increased by 358% as compared to 2019.

Key Chinese Cyber Attack Statistics

• In China, the scale of the cyber security industry has exceeded 200 billion yuan ($29.23 billion) in 2021 and it has also grown at an annual average of 15% from 2016 to 2020.
• In the period from 2017 to 2021, China’s courts have registered more than 282,000 cyberattack cases. This involved 282 different crimes like fraudulent accounting at the peak (36.53%).
• In December, the U.S. announces an ambassadorial boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
• According to the study, the appellants were aged between 18 to 40 and the age proportion changed between 18 and 28 in 2019.
• Between February and August 2021, 4 IPs were seen communicating with Winnti C2 Servers and possibly a Cobalt Strike server. This leads to approximately 500 MB of data being refiltered from the network.
• 72,000 cases involved 143,700 appellants. Of them, 90% of the appellants were born after 1980. Such criminal activities started rising after 2020 with an increase of 34 times and also in 2021 by 17 times.
• Twitter shuts down thousands of state-linked accounts in China that cast to counter evidence of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
• In 2021 more than 660,000 appellants were involved in cyber attacks in China, with an average of 2.4 appellants per case.
• From the beginning of 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has reportedly handled more than 12,000 cases of telecommunication and internet fraud involving minors.
• By the end of 2022, China and Japan have acknowledged setting up a joint communication hotline amid tensions over Taiwan and issues In the East and South China seas.
• In 2020 the public security organs across China handled a total of 322,000 cases of telecommunication and network fraud and also arrested 361,000 suspects.
• From April 2021 to April 2022, these figures have increased to 394,000 cases and 634,000 arrested.
• On July 19, 2021, the U.S. Government and its mergers included the EU, the Five Eyes countries, and NATO which is publicly doomed and blamed the PRS for a series of cyberattacks.

Cyber Espionage by China

Foreign policies have provided an estimation range related to China’s “hacker army” somewhere around 50,000 to 100,000 individually. Through this, we will be getting more details on Chinese Cyber-attack statistics.

Following are the accusations of cyberwarfare and cyber-attacks:

• Australia: ABC claimed in May 2013 that, China had stolen blueprints of the headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
• India: Indian government officials believed that attacks on Indian government networks, and the attacks on the National Security Council would have originated from China. The Indian government says that Chinese hackers are the experts in operating botnets. In addition, Chinese cyberattacks against India’s cyberspace have multiplied.
• Taiwan: Taiwan is the leader in terms of overall competitiveness. Because of this, there is a comparison between the semiconductor industry in China and Taiwan. As per the report by Wired on 6^th August 2020, Taiwan has faced an empirical war with China. In Taiwan's entire existence, it has been targeted by China’s hackers that are sponsored by the state. As per the research of Taiwan’s security firm, a single group of Chinese hackers was able to transfix an industry at the core of the Taiwanese economy and semiconductor industry.
• Canada: Canadian government officials have claimed that Chinese hackers accommodated several departments with the federal government in 2011. Canada's Chief Information Officers claimed that Chinese hackers dealt with computer systems within the National Research Council.
• Japan: Japan claimed in research in April 2021 that the Chinese military had ordered cyberattacks on almost 200 Japanese companies and research institutes.
• The Vatican: Chinese hackers sponsored by the state were operating under the name RedDelta as per the research in July 2020. The Vatican’s computer network ahead of the negotiations was hacked.
• United States:
• Google had reported that targeted attacks were done from China on its computer infrastructure. It resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.
• A federal grand jury in the United States indicted 5 PLA Units 61398 officers on the theft of confidential business information from U.S. commercial firms in May 2014.
• A Senate Armed Services Committee probe revealed hackers associated with the Chinese government which were committing several trespasses on computer systems that belonged to U.S Airlines and also to many technological companies.
• In 2015, the U.S. Office of Personal Management (OPM) declared that it was a target of the data breach that targeted the records of as many as 21.5 million users.
• In 2019, further study also resulted in positive results about the US Navy and its Industrial partner's attack.
• In February 2020, a US Federal grand jury arrested 4 members of China’s People Liberation Army (PLA) for the 2017 Equifax hack.
• FireEye said that they had suspected Chinese hackers who used the zero-day attack against the Pulse Connect Secure devices, a VPN device. This was all done to spy on the dozens of governments, defense industry, and financial targets in the US and also in European countries.

What is the Most Common Type of Cybercrime?

In 2021 cybercrimes worldwide increased by 125% as compared to 2020. As per the study, it is proved that Phishing is the most common form of cyber-attack.

• Almost 323,972 internet users suffered a phishing attack in 2021. This means that half of the users went through data breaches and in the same year the rate of cybercrimes reached 220%.
• In 2021 during the pandemic time, 1 out of 5 internet users faced email hacking.

January 2013: The New York Times

The New York Times’s reporters and employees were victimized by a sustainable four-month cyberattack. After the chief of “The New York Times”, David Barboza, published an investigation into how the relative of the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao.

The attack was started from the same university where the computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past.

July 2017: Equifax

In 2017, the data of more than 147 million Americans were at risk as their accounts were hacked. System of credit- reporting agency Equifax.  In this attack important information like credit card numbers and home addresses. In 2020, four Chinese military hackers indicated infiltration of the Equifax system.

November 2023: Japan’s Space Agency

Japan’s space agency was hacked by Chinese-linked attackers during the summer of 2023 and they did a comprise with the directory of the organization. This agency had shut down 2 of its parts of the network to investigate the breach but with this claim, it did not compromise the critical rocket and satellite information

November 2023: Cambodian Government Networks

24 Cambodian government networks were targeted by Chinese cybercriminals. This included National Defence, Human Rights, National Treasury, Commerce, Finance, Election Oversight, Natural resources, Telecommunication, and Politics. Hackers presented themselves as cloud storage services to cover up their data filtration. Research and study say that this attack was a part of the broader Chinese campaign.

October 2023: Guyana Government Agencies

As per the recent research and report in February 2023, the Chinese hackers have targeted the Guyana Government agencies. These hackers used the technique of phishing emails and exfiltering information.

September 2023: Microsoft Report Increasing Attacks U.S. Defense and Critical Infrastructure

As per the recent Microsoft report, an increase in the Chinese Cyber operation in the South China Sea has been observed. There are increasing levels of attacks against the U.S. defense industrial base and also U.S. critical infrastructure. There has been always a cold war between China and the U.S

September 2023: Asian National Grid Power Attack 

Asian countries have been attacked by suspected Chinese hackers on national grid power at the beginning of this year. A group had corrupted a Windows application and thus it was targeted.

August 2023: Attack On Several Taiwan-based Organizations

Along with several Taiwan-based organizations, U.S military procurements systems were also hacked by the Chinese hackers. The hackers had attacked the high-bandwidth routers to exfiltrate data and also to covert proxy networks in the system.

August 2023: U.S. State Department

The personal and political emails and data of U.S. citizens were hacked by Chinese attackers from Nebraskan similar way this time the hackers exploited the Microsoft vulnerability which gave easy access to the emails and data of the State Department and also to the Department of Commerce.

July 2023: Wuhan Earthquake Monitoring System

China blames the “U.S. cybercriminals” that the earthquake monitoring system in Wuhan has been hacked by them. Chinese media asserts that a program with the capacity to steal seismic data was inserted in the program.

China Was Cited As The Cause…

As the Chinese Cyber-attacks data report showed China was singled out as the primary culprit behind the cyberattacks. ASD declared that state-backed hackers continue to slash major infrastructure and companies.

In May Australia joined the Five Eyes intelligence partners to identify China as the source of cyber-attacks against US infrastructure.

ASD has highlighted the conduct of Russian criminals in the ongoing attack on Ukraine in a case study of cyber-attacks that are supported by the state.

China Cybersecurity Market Analysis

(Source: mordorintelligence.com)

By 2023 Chinese cybersecurity statistics for cyber attacks Market Size is anticipated to increase to the current USD 15.58 billion. It is predicted that by 2028, the market size will increase to USD 40.94 billion and a CAGR of 21.31 percent over the predicted time frame (2023 to 2028).

• To address the growing conflict in the world and requests for greater personal security in response, the Chinese government devised a plan to increase the cyber security of its citizens.
• Through encouraging the growth of a growing demand for products and technologies the government projected the market to be worth over CNY 250 billion (USD 38.6 billion/HKD 299.73 billion) in 2023.=
• Personal data and transactional data are common in Chinese companies and are also increasing slowly. Because the organization system is insecure, sensitive data is frequently exposed and these firms are the most likely suspects in cybercrimes.
• There is Chinese cybersecurity industry is expected to grow because of COVID-19. Because of the threat of cyber-attacks involving ransomware and malware, COVID-19.

China Ranks Third in the World for Being Targeted by Cyber Breaches

• After Russia and India, China ranks 3^rd in the world for cyber breaches.
• Shanghai police database was breached by unspecified hackers who had also hacked the data of several other Chinese citizens.
• China displays 1092% every quarter, an increase in data breached users.
• Malaysia witnesses a 733% spike in data breaches.
• 991 million accounts have been compromised since 2004. Almost 3.4 million Chinese users have compromised in this timespan.
• East Asian countries experienced a high quarterly increase in users that resulted in South Korea at 1013%, China at 1092%, and Japan at 1442%.
• According to Internet Development Statistics Chinese underground crimes were worth more than US$15 billion. As per the study, there was an estimation that 400,000 people worked underground in cybercriminal networking.
• According to a study published in February 2019 by Beijing Knownsec Information Technology, China had suffered the highest rate of distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) in the whole world.
• 143,319 information systems susceptibility were documented by the MIIT information sharing portal for cyber security in the year 2021. At most 86,217 of these were classified as “medium risk” and 40,498 as “high risk.
• In the same manner, in 2021, 753,018 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) strikes were reported by China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom. Then a 43.9% drop from 2020.
• The cybersecurity threats that were reported to the MIIT portal as of 2021 were 88,799, down 60.9% from the 2020 period.

China Cybersecurity Industry Overview

(Reference: mordorintelligence.com)

• November 2021: To improve the security of the collaboration and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) programs, the next-generation Cloud Access Security (CASB) from Palo Alto Networks uses machine learning. To provide features that learn, such as automated application discovery, ML and AI platforms leverage are utilized.
• July 2020: A Network security service company named Chaitin Future Technology Co Ltd which is part of Aliyun, announced a next-generation analysis of security in networks. The platform cleverly integrates the platform and users to analyze the risks from a macro view.

China Cybersecurity Market Leaders

• Palo Alto Networks: In the first quarter of 2024's financial year (ending in October 2023) Palo Alto Networks reported revenues of $1.88 billion, an increase of 20.1 percent from the previous quarter, and a net loss of $194 million. This was which was up from the $20 million reported in the same quarter of fiscal year 2023.
• ThreatBook: ThreatBook is China's very first security threat intelligence firm dedicated to providing in-real-time exact, precise, and unique threat information to stop attacks, detect threats, and keep track of changing threats and their sources to mitigate the risk.
• IBM Corporation: IBM's net earnings for the 12 months ended on September 30th, 2023 was $6.924B that's which is a 448.65 percent increase from year to year. IBM's annual net profit in 2022 was $1.639B which is an increase of 71.46 percentage decrease over 2021. IBM's net income in 2021 was $5.743B which is an increase of 2.74 percentage increase from 2020.
• QI – ANXIN Technology Group Inc.: Qi An Xin Technology Group Inc. is a Chinese-based company that provides corporate-grade security solutions and services for networks.

Conclusion

The advancements in cybersecurity present many opportunities for businesses and companies. According to a study conducted in the past few times, China has expanded its cybersecurity capabilities because of the increase in cyber-attacks. The world's nations place a high value on cyberspace security since it is vital to the advancement of the Internet ecosystem.

Therefore, it is crucial to research the Chinese cyber-attack statistics of all countries around the world and to adopt preventive steps.

Barry Elad

Barry is a lover of everything technology. Figuring out how the software works and creating content to shed more light on the value it offers users is his favorite pastime. When not evaluating apps or programs, he's busy trying out new healthy recipes, doing yoga, meditating, or taking nature walks with his little one.

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