Call to strike hackers hard

The absence of laws for dealing with crime in cyberspace has caused the police difficulties in coping with Internet attackers, according to Shi Xirong, municipal police director in charge of web security.

WWW.315.online.sh.cn or chinachoices.net became a victim of Internet crime, suffering repeated attacks by unknown hackers soon after opening a very popular chat programme on St Valentine's Day on Monday.

The attack again drew attention to the relatively lax computer security awareness on the part of mushrooming web companies in China.

"The hacker launched eight attacks on Monday and another attack on Tuesday. Our pictures on the web were replaced by some pornographic pictures and ultimately our on-line services had to be suspended when we were inundated with tens of millions of visitors in an instant," said He Xiangming, general manager of the web company.

The system was restored by Wednesday evening after the company replaced its server with a new one.

"Although we did not suffer economically from the attack this time, the consequences could have been much worse if we had started up our e-commerce business," said He.

He believed the hackers were principally motivated by the desire to show off their computer skills.

Although the methods of the hackers' attack were very similar to the recent attacks on major international sites such as Yahoo!, He was certain the attackers were from China. Two policemen in charge of web security were called in following the attack, but were unable to assist.

While the attack certainly caused inconvenience to the web users, He said it also enabled the web company to be more aware of the loopholes in its security system. The attack was just one of a number directed against different web companies during the Spring Festival.

On February 8 and 13, www.sina.com.cn's email system suffered two hacker attacks. Email messages through their system were delayed by 17 hours as a result of the attack.

According to Shi, the incidence of attacks by computer hackers has grown significantly since the mid-1990s. A member of the security staff with shanghai.online said attempted attacks against the website number several hundred each day.

Shanghai Star