Viruses Blast 1 Million Chinese Computers
By Christopher Nickson
October 10, 2007
A series of viruses unleashed during a weeklong Chinese holiday hit over a million PCs there.
If you passed Labor Day without getting a computer virus, think yourself lucky. Last week, during the long Chinese national holiday known as Golden Week, more than a million Chinese computer users saw their machines attacked.
According to the Chinese anti-virus company Jiangmin, over 118,000 PCs crashed on October 6 alone, a story in China Daily said. More than 24,000 different viruses were detected.
However, it was one in particular that worried experts at another anti-virus company, Kingsoft, as it attacked anti-virus software. They’ve gone so far as to dub it “the ultimate killer to anti-virus software.” Li Tiejun, an anti-virus software engineer of Kingsoft, told China Daily,
"It will also automatically search the keywords, including 'anti-virus, Kingsoft and Kaspersky,' and coercively close the programs. The virus has been supported and spread by a group of people who have developed a systematic and standardized business operation to make profit."
More than that, those behind the virus can also detect the IP address of each computer, a worrying development.
With over 130 million computers in use, China is en route to becoming the world’s biggest nation of computer users.