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SCMP Reporter

Hackers have been attacking the website of the agency that administers trading in Chinese bonds since Monday,  causing it to shut down and leaving the government's internet emergency response system in chaos.  
In the past three days, the website of the only agency authorised to manage and oversee the bond trade - the China Government Securities Depository Trust & Clearing Co - came under 'massive' and 'illintended' attacks from unknown hackers, website manager Liu Yan  said.
'I don't know why they are doing this  or what they want. I don't even know where they've come from,' Liu said. 
The damage was so devastating that the company's information technology engineers could not  say when the service would be back  online.
It was still not possible to access the agency's website via  its domain name (www.chinabond.com.cn) last night. But an indirect approach using its internet protocol address (http://202.108.90.29) was working.
The agency also has a database - which it says is internal and not connected to the internet - that holds  registration, management and trade records  for every bond issued by the  central government, state-owned banks and enterprises. 
The information has always been classified to prevent outsiders from knowing the extent of China's debt.
Liu said it was 'highly unlikely' that the hackers had breached the internal database and stolen sensitive information. 
The internal network connecting to trading terminals had not been affected by the attack, and daily business - such as bond buying and selling - was continuing as normal, she said.  
A bond trader at Guotai Junan Securities in Shanghai confirmed Liu's comments. 
The trader said that although the website shutdown had made it inconvenient to get the latest information on Chinese bonds, he was still able to buy and sell bonds from his office computer.
But the trader, who declined to be named, said the incident had made him concerned about the vulnerability of the mainland's financial platforms in cyberspace.
'Maybe the hackers attacked the website to create a diversion. Maybe they've already got what they wanted and then left as quietly as a ghost,' he said.
'We don't know any details. They keep us in the dark.'
But bond traders are not the only ones left in the dark by the attack. 
An officer with the China National Computer Emergency Response Technical Team  under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that, by law, the team should have been the first to be informed about the incident - but they were not.
The team did not take any action until yesterday because 'no one told us anything', the officer said, adding he was still trying to get in touch with the agency for more details.
It is unknown whether the attack was launched from within China or overseas, but cybersecurity firm McAfee announced last month that hackers who appeared to be based in China had conducted a 'co-ordinated, covert and targeted' campaign of cyberespionage against major Western energy firms, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The incident  was the latest in a recent round of cyberattacks targeting big companies around the globe.
Bloomberg quoted a confidential e-mail from California-based computer security firm HBGary, which was leaked last month, as saying that Morgan Stanley had experienced a 'very sensitive' break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google's computers more than a year ago.



Bond trading agency website shut down by hackers in 'massive' assault