China computers face virus epidemic

Staff and wires

The increasing popularity of the Internet has given rise to more computer virus attacks

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BEIJING, China -- Four out of five computers in China, the world's largest computer and Internet market, have been affected by computer viruses, according to a report in the official state news service, China Daily.

The results of the six-week survey conducted by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre showed that the problem was worsening by the year, highlighting the Chinese computer market's vulnerability to infection.

"Only 16 percent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack, while last year nearly one in three users said they suffered no computer infections," the newspaper quoted the researcher's chief engineer, Zhang Jian, as saying.

The Internet had this year usurped software, such as floppy disks, as the main source of computer viruses.

The center reported that computer viruses now represented a major threat to network security, as more and more people -- many not virus-conscious -- used the internet.

Half of the infected machines had suffered data losses, problems browsing the Web, or other damage, the China Daily said.

Computer viruses are small programmes often sent via e-mail or hidden in other software. Once inside a computer, they can do malicious tasks like erase data or reproduce and send copies to other machines over the Internet.

The good news

Despite the marked increase in virus attacks, a recent worm called "Bugbear" -- which records keystrokes, increasing vulnerability to hacking attacks -- appeared not to have affected many systems in China, the newspaper said.

Only a small percentage of Chinese have access to computers and the Internet, but with a population of nearly 1.3 billion, the absolute numbers are still huge.

China added 12 million new Internet users in the first six months of this year, pushing its total to more than 45 million, official data showed.

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