A large number of network attacks were found during the Asian Winter Games in Harbin, according to a report released on Thursday by China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center. The report says the attacks were related to the United States government. CGTN's Zhao Yunfei explains the tactics of the hackers.

ZHAO YUNFEI, CGTN Reporter "Why is the Asian Winter Games a target of multiple cyber attacks? What is the purpose of these attacks? And what makes the cyber security team believe the attacks were from the United States?"

DU ZHENHUA, Senior Engineer, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center "If the systems of the Asian Winter Games were damaged due to the cyber attacks, it would affect the order of the competitions. It is apparently aligned with the strategic interest of the United States."

ZHAO YUNFEI, CGTN Reporter "A cyber security team in China released a new report, suggesting a whole strategic set of cyberattacks were carried out by foreign hackers during the Asian Winter Games in February.

China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center says from January 26 to February 14, the number of cyber attacks against the information systems of the Games exceeded 270 thousand attempts.

The event officially began on February 7, but the first ice hockey game started on February 3. If you look at the timing that was the window when information was available in the systems, including details about the coaches and athletes.

There were three competition systems that were heavily attacked. The arrival and departure management system was one of them. It contains key information about the important guests visiting the city."

DU ZHENHUA, Senior Engineer, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center "We can tell as we were monitoring that the attackers kept seeking access to the systems to steal the data. They even tried to damage the system."

ZHAO YUNFEI, CGTN Reporter "As I said, it's a strategic attack, because the attacks not only target the Games systems but the entire information infrastructure of Heilongjiang, the host province of the Games."

Both cable and wireless networks and data centers were under attack. If these key pieces of infrastructure were damaged or affected, then the entire system of the Asian Winter Games would go offline. So, who conducted these attacks?

The cyber security team traced the IP addresses and found that they were mainly from the Netherlands and the United States.

DU ZHENHUA, Senior Engineer, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center "The United States intelligence agencies frequently used cloud hosts located in the Netherlands, Germany, and other European countries as hop or puppet hosts to launch attacks against China's institutions. This time, we found a large number of hackers with IPs from the Netherlands and other countries."

ZHAO YUNFEI, CGTN Reporter "The report says by reviewing the timeline, language of instruction, and tactics they believe the attacks were related to the United States government. This is the second time of this year that China's national cyber security agencies released information on U.S. cyberattacks against China. Last time the victim was a major Chinese technology enterprise. The report highlights that China is facing a severe cyber security situation and it says will submit the details to the public security sector."