Researchers based in Symantec studied over 12 billion emails and
identified that almost 30% of all malicious emails are sourced from
within China and that 21.3% came from the Chinese city of Shaoxing
alone. The researchers were also able to identify that the primary
targets for these malicious emails were human rights activists and
experts in Asian defence policy, which they claim indicates a strong
state involvement in the attacks. The research shows that 28.2% of the
targeted attacks came from China, with 21.1% coming from Romania and the
United States coming in as the third highest source of malicious emails.
PhiBetaIota: It's worth noting that the article says “hacker” and later “attacks” as though they are equivalent. Anyone with a more sophisticated understanding of hacking is aware that this is not the case, and that there is a whole community of hackers that embody a whole other non-malicious form of hacking (see 2600.com & their summer conference in NYC).
