Akamai study finds a third of all cyber attacks originate from China

A third of all cyber attacks originated from China during the third quarter of 2012, according to a report by Akamai.

Akamai found that the second leading country for cyber attacks was the US. Russia was reported to have come in a distant third. The statistics come from Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet report.

"During the quarter, the top 10 countries/regions were responsible for generating 72 percent of the observed attack traffic. Within the top 10, slightly more than 50 percent of attack traffic was generated by three countries: China, the United States and Russia," Akamai claimed.

According to Akamai's report, the number of global cyber attacks doubled from the second to third quarters. The internet content delivery company found that China led the world in cyber attacks for both quarters.

Chinese based cyber attacks were up in the third quarter, accounting for 33 percent of attack traffic compared to 16 percent in the second quarter.

The US came in second to China last quarter with 13 percent of all attacks coming from the country up one per cent from the second to third quarter.

Russia moved into the top three in cyber attacks for the third quarter. The country passed Turkey who held the spot in Q2. Russian based attacks made up for 4.7 percent of cyber attacks around the world.

Turkey saw a nearly three percent decrease in cyber attacks for the quarter, with only 4.3 percent of attacks eminating there. That represented a dip from the second quarter when 7.6 per cent of attacks came from hackers based in Turkey.

Along with cyber attack statistics, Akamai found that South Korea had the highest average internet connection speed. The company's report stated that the average connection speed in South Korea was 14.7 Mbit/s.

On a global average, connection speeds saw a seven percent decline from the second to third quarter. The average global connection speed was 2.8 Mbit/s, according to the State of the Internet report.

Akamai's statistics come from data collected through its Akamai Intelligent Platform. The platform analysis data related to internet usage. Akamai uses the data compiled from the platform to discover trends throughout each given quarter.