Flip a coin: half of China’s government websites have security flaws

Trojan horses, phishing plugins, and theft of user information are some of the risks you’ll face if you land on a website run by the Chinese government.

The National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center conducted a study showing 50.4 percent of government websites in China contained security vulnerabilities, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency. The Center analyzed 2,714 websites in total, finding more than 21,000 security risks.

These websites are a risk not only to the people who view them, but to the organizations they represent as well.

The survey also found many government websites are poorly coded, leaving loopholes that easily compromise the site. In many cases, basic protection measures such as firewalls and anti-virus software were no where to be seen.

Hackers in the past have successfully paralyzed government websites, or even altered them so they display advertisements. In one case last year, a government website was hacked so that it automatically redirected to a porn site.

Navigate to almost any ‘.gov’ website in China, and you’ll often find the quality cringeworthy. Government websites are ugly, difficult to navigate, and look like they were all made in the 1990s. The report said many of the sites were launched only because officials were ordered to, but they have neither the motivation nor resources to fix them.

(Source: Xinhua; top image via Flickr user Michael Pollak)