Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ("MIIT") has issued the Measures for Monitoring and Handling Threat to Network Security of the Public Internet (the "Measures"), effective from January 1, 2018.
The Measures clearly specify that the threat to network security of the public internet is defined as any network resource, malicious program, hidden security danger or security accident that exists or is spread on the public internet and is likely to do or has done harm to the public, and includes five circumstances, such as "a rogue program used to attack the network, including the Trojan virus, worm, bot process and malicious mobile code". Further, the Measures state that competent telecommunications authorities may take four types of measures, including "notifying and requesting the concerned network service provider to eliminate the likely malicious program in its network, system or website that may be further transmitted to a wider scale", to cope with any threat that arises to network security. In addition, the Measures stipulate that basic telecommunications enterprises, internet-based enterprises, domain name registries and registrars, etc. should provide technical support and assistance to competent telecommunications authorities when they are inquiring into owners of IP addresses, domain name registration information, etc.