Hcss report

Information Indicators: Cyber Attacks
Everybody recognizes the growing importance of the information sphere for 
international relations and international security – both in a positive and a negative 
sense. Unfortunately – and much of this has to do with the very ‘new’ and elusive 
character of information – we do not yet have good datasets to measure the ‘power’ 
of various countries in this area. We therefore suggest to treat Figure 2.25 with 
caution. Whereas this is the most frequently used dataset for the country of origin of 
cyber attacks in 2013, it has to be recognized that this is based on the geo-location of 
the observed ip-address, and thus is of limited usefulness in determining the actual 
2002
2000
1998
1996
1994
1992
1990
1988
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
% GDP
Europe
Netherlands
US
Russia
China

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HCSS REPORT
45
provenance. Still, despite all of these caveats, this dataset indicates that China appears 
to be extremely assertive in this domain as well. 
COUNTRY
Q3 ‘13 % TRAFFIC
Q2 ‘13 %
1
China
35,0%
33,0%
2
Indonesia
20,0%
38,0%
3
United States
11,0%
6,9%
4
Taiwan
5,2%
2,5%
5
Russia
2,6%
1,7%
6
Brazil
2,1%
1,4%
7
India
1,9%
2,0%
8
Romania
1,7%
1,0%
9
South Korea
1,2%
0,9%
10
Venezuela
1,1%
0,6%
:
Other
17,0%
11,0%
FIGURE 2.25: CYBER ATTACK TRAFFIC, PER COUNTRY OF ORIGIN (BY SOURCE IP ADDRESS, NOT ATTRIBUTION) IN 2013
116
35.0%
17.0%
Other
Venezuela
South Korea
Romania
India
Brazil
Russia
Taiwan
United
States
Indonesia
China
5.2%
2.6%
2.1%
1.9%
1.7%
1.1%
1.2%
11.0%
20.0%

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