国内英语新闻:China to issue unified rules on sentencing for cyber attack crimes

BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua)-- China will issue new judicial rules governing sentencing standards for cyber attack crimes by the end of this year, an official of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) told Xinhua Wednesday.

China has become a major victim of online crimes such as hacker attacks, with eight out of every ten computers in the country having suffered botnet attacks, said Gu Jian, vice director of the Internet security bureau of the MPS.

Botnet is a network of computers that have had malicious software installed in them and are under the control of criminals, while the owners of the computers remain unaware of the computer hacking.

China criminalized attacks on computer systems in 1997, and made specific provisions on hacker attacks, such as outlawing the illegal control of another computer, in its seventh amendment to the Criminal Law in 2009.

In most botnet cases in China, the controllers were found to be located abroad, Gu said.

Moreover, more than 80 percent of the cyber attacks targeting websites of China's government agencies came from overseas, Gu said.

Gu called for more international cooperation in fighting transnational online crimes at the fourth U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum which concluded Tuesday in Beijing.

At the forum, China and the U.S. agreed to strengthen international law enforcement in combating cyber crimes, improve international cooperation mechanisms in this regard, and enhance communication on fighting cyber crimes.

In addition to cyber attacks, other kinds of major online crimes included online pornography, online gambling and online fraud, Gu added.