China the leading source of cyberattacks, new report confirms

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China is still the leading country with a large amount of cyberattack traffic, though not all of it comes directly from intentional cybercriminals

The Chinese government is routinely blamed for cyberattacks, especially against U.S. and other western nations, and the country is still the top source for attacks, according to a report from Akamai. China amounted for 43 percent of attack traffic, which is an astonishing lead ahead of the United States at 19 percent, research found.

The Akamai report found cyberattacks from IP addresses in 188 countries worldwide, with China and the United States joined by Canada (10 percent), Indonesia (5.7 percent) and Taiwan (3.4 percent) at the top of the list. Furthermore, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks also saw a drastic increase during Q4 2013, with cybercriminals benefiting from cheaper, more sophisticated attacks.

However, not all attacks from Chinese-based IP addresses are likely from cyberattackers within the country - since the nation has seen an explosion in mobile and PC Internet use, many hijacked systems are compromised from hackers located elsewhere.