HANGZHOU -- More than 18 million samples of malicious computer programs were captured in China in the first half of this year, with an average daily spread of more than 4.83 million times, said a senior engineer at the national computer security monitoring center.

More than 57 percent of the overseas malicious programs came from the United States, said Chen Xunxun, deputy chief engineer with China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center (CNCERT/CC). Chen released the data at a cybersecurity forum in east China's Zhejiang Province on Tuesday.

In H1, about 42 million IP addresses in China were attacked by malicious computer programs, accounting for about 12.4 percent of the total number of IP addresses in the country. The number of computers infected with malicious programs in China is about 3.04 million, up by 25.7 percent year on year, according to Chen.

COVID-19-related topics have become new sources of attacks. Many overseas organizations have launched epidemic-themed attacks on Chinese government agencies, military industry institutions, medical organizations, universities, and research institutes, Chen said.

The cybersecurity threats of remote working will remain high in the context of regular COVID-19 prevention and control measures, Chen said. He suggested taking countermeasures to prevent information leakage and security problems associated with remote backups.