About one-third of the world's cyberattack traffic in Q3 2012 originated in China, according to Akamai in its quarterly State of the Internet report. “China’s growth from the second quarter was fairly significant, and somewhat surprising,” the report said. The US was in second place, from which 13 per cent of cyberattacks originated between July and September. Russia, Taiwan and Turkey each accounted for less than 5 per cent.

Akamai noted that cyberattacks increased between Q2 and Q3 2012. "Towards the end of the third quarter, a set of DDoS attacks targeted the Web sites of banks and other financial institutions. Among the attacks that targeted Akamai customers, we observed total traffic levels as high as 65Gbit/s, with nearly a third of that targeting DNS infrastructure,” the report said.

FierceTelecom: Week in research: China tops cyberattack study; CIOs' role will change; TelecomTV content partner.