DALIAN - China suffered about 493,000 cyber attacks last year, about half of which originated abroad, particularly the United States and India, according to a computer security report issued Tuesday in the northeastern port city of Dalian.

Most of the attacks came in the form of malicious "Trojan" software used by hackers to gain access to target computers, according to the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China, the country's primary computer security monitoring network.

The report said 14.7 percent of the malicious programs came from Internet Protocol addresses (IPs) located in the United States, with another 8 percent located in India.

International cooperation has been enhanced, the report said, citing an example of Beijing and Seoul cooperating to thwart Republic of Korea-originated cyber attacks targeting a ring-back tone website registered in northwest China in May 2010.

The report said hacking that tampers with web pages is often politically or religiously motivated, though sometimes it is purely to show off. Some government agencies' websites are often targeted by IPs that originate from Turkey, with hackers displaying texts and pictures intended for political and religious campaigns, it said.

Hackers tampered with nearly 35,000 web pages -- including 4,635 government websites -- in the past year, the report said, up 67.6 percent from a year earlier. It said 60 percent of websites of ministry-level government departments are at risk of being hacked.

Concerning domestic cyber attacks, the report said an increasing number of financial institutes or online payment platforms are being fabricated. Hackers steal customer information on these fabricated websites and use it to gain access to financial accounts through online banking.

The Chinese report came days after US cyber-security company McAfee said it had no direct evidence that a particular nation is behind the global scheme and added that it never accused China of being involved. The company's recent report discovered an unprecedented series of cyber attacks on 72 government agencies and business organizations worldwide.

China has the world's largest online population -- 485 million Internet users.