Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected

Alien54 writes "A rueters news report says that 80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus. They quote a a six-week survey conducted by the [Chinese] National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center cited in the official China Daily newspaper."

goldmine for software publishers

[Diver777]

Can someone say goldmine for anti-virus makers, at least ones that can produce a chinese version of their product... but oh yeah, with the insanely high % of piracy as well, it doesn't look like anyone would buy the product legit!

Incorrect

[drhairston]

I must point out a factual inaccuracy in the article summary. It is not stated that 80% of Chinese computers have at one point experienced a virus infection. In fact, it is stated that over 80% of a sample group of Chinese computer users believed they had been infected with a virus. This perception is a much muddier number, considering I know many of my colleagues believe that advertising pop-up ads for casinos are actually computer viruses.

Here is the source for my observation:

"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 center's chief engineer, Zhang Jian, as saying.

Misleading headline

[User 956]

80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus

Typical Slashdot journalism. "touched by a virus" is far different than "infected by a virus". My computer gets touched by viruses all the time, but it never actually gets infected, because I keep my apache (the only service running) up-to-date.

Not very surprising, Language barrier plays a role

[Amadaeus]

It's not extremely surprising. Most asian computer users are still not very well versed in the English language, and that is proven in some of the email text found on virus infected emails.
Because of the poor grasp of English, emails with attached 'cute wallpaper', 'nude pics of Brittney', and 'Figures you please review' will be opened 8 our of 10 times.
Without a big flashing strobe light on top of monitors that would alarm when an infected email appears, most asian users will continue to open infected email without a second thought.

what about in US?

[ralphie98]

It probably isn't much better here in the US. I know that where I work, before we got our network anti-virus, it was probably close to 95% of computers had been touched by a virus. The email based virii spread through the whole company in 2 weeks max.

Re:Hrm

[aridhol]

Probably has something to do with the amount of piracy. I mean, how many pirates deliberately contact the owner of the software they copied in order to pick up updates? Especially with something like Windows, where you don't know what data is being sent back to them.

Re:Incorrect

[garcia]

I must point out that most people have NO idea when they are infected with a virus, especially email borne ones.

These people think that mail sent by the viruses that are being returned to them are actually others accessing their computer and emailing from it. They have no idea that they have contracted a virus at all.

"I have a virus scanner!"

Re:goldmine for software publishers

[L33t-Geek]

The high percent of Piracy wouldnt matter if they made it cost $$$ (or whatever currency they use) to update virus definetions. Make them sign up and account and give them a unique #. When they update they only get the viruses that have been added since last time that # downloaded an update. Therefore if 2 people share a number then they effictivly split there protection 50/50. Yes they could get around this. But its worth a try. -Geek

Re:government propaganda

[ralphie98]

Maybe they're publishing this in order to support MORE filtering so they can "stop the virii" and have more control over their citizens. This would help them justify blocking email attachments and more ports.

Touched = Infected?

[Nick Harkin]

I personally have been 'touched' by many viruses (virii?) in the past, but they all got stopped by my antivirus.... i guess i would count as being in that 80%..... Touched is not the same as infected.....

Re:In Other news

[L33t-Geek]

With all the piracy in Asia on products like windows how hard would it be for one of those "bandits" to slip a virus into the installation process? Since there buying it pirated who they gonna whine to? Microsoft? LOL! If those "bandits" arent alread slipping these viruses on there illegal copies look for it to start happining soon. -Geek

Easily believeable

[MxTxL]

I used to live in Beijing... as an american there you would be astonished at the rate of piracy. We're used to maybe picking up a copy of photoshop from a buddy, or you know someone who will burn you a copy of windows.... there they sell about any commercial software product (not too long after release) on pressed CDs (with case and jacket) for about a buck in just about any open marketplace. Needless to say, there are not too many people with 'real' versions of the software running around.

The problem with these CDs is that they have been cracked (so people can use them) by who-knows-who and frequently have other 'things' floating around on the CDs and i'm sure there huge numbers of virii that are being distributed in this way. It's really easy to picture an 80% infection rate. It's kinda like a high school computer lab where all the kids trade floppy disks and there is no anti-virus protection.... everyone has it before long.

Re:Incorrect

[phsolide]

over 80% of a sample group of Chinese computer users believed they had been infected with a virus

I'll believe in this belief. Years ago, maybe 1989 or 1990, I had a conversation with an engineer at then-major aerospace company Martin Marietta. He was no dummy, but he carried the misbelief that a computer virus was something that occurred naturally, like an influenza virus, or herpes.

In conjunction with the "if anything's wrong with my computer, it's a virus" phenomena you see every day amongst business types, an 80% belief rate isn't unlikely, even in the USA.

I blame the Anti-Virus industry at least partially for this. Members of the AV community are so tight-lipped about viruses that they end up being almost mystical. AV people seem to believe that any real information about a virus or worm will foster further virus and/or worm writing. So they don't give out any real information (like "Using Outlook will inevitably cause you to get infected. Switch to something else"). They even seem to have helped the trend of calling any malware a "virus" because of this.

Survey methodology?

[Rev.LoveJoy]

There is no detail about how this 'survey' was carried out.

Try this, ask 10 computer users (users, not geeks) these two questions:

1). Have you ever had a strange computer problem?

2). Think it could have been a virus?

I would lay money that you can find an 80% 'touched by a virus' rating on any group of people you like.

Anyone familar with the social sciences and / or statistics realizes that corrolation does not equal causation. However, if you're a gov't agencey (as one reader posted previously) in need of funding, corollation = causation is a very useful tool. Even more so when you engineer the corollation part.

This article is a waste of time.

Cheers,
-- RLJ

Re:goldmine for software publishers

[f97tosc]

Many responses to my original post point out that it is not hard to get a hold of pirated anti-virus software.

But the point I tried to make was that for anti-virus software to be effective, you need frequent (daily, for corporate systems) updates from the vendor. While I don't know this for a fact, I would assume that you need a registration or an original serial number to get the latest update.

Generally speaking, the more interaction between a vendor and a user, the more dificult it is to pirate. Where there is no interaction, like music, it is completely impossible for a company to stop pirated copies.

Tor

Re:Incorrect

[giminy]

I blame the Anti-Virus industry at least partially for this. Members of the AV community are so tight-lipped about viruses that they end up being almost mystical. AV people seem to believe that any real information about a virus or worm will foster further virus and/or worm writing. So they don't give out any real information (like "Using Outlook will inevitably cause you to get infected. Switch to something else"). They even seem to have helped the trend of calling any malware a "virus" because of this.

Maybe they just want to keep themselves in business. If everybody fled from Outlook, there would not be as strong a need for virus checking software, now would there? :).

Re:10,000 lbs per acer

[inerte]

You:
I just wonder what would China have to gain by saying all their computers are 0w3d?

Reuters:
Computer viruses are small programs 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.

You + Reuters = The Great Firewall [wired.com]

You + Reuters = Software Piracy [newsfactor.com]

Re:goldmine for software publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when someone needs to reformat, and get back all of the previous virus definitions?

Infected or exposed to? 80% isn't a high number

[devleopard]

The article is unclear on whether or not 80% of the computers actually have viruses. Even the Slashdot post uses the word "touched", not "infected". Viruses come into contact with my computer all the time. I'd bet that at least 80% of the computers in America or Western Europe have been "touched" by a virus.

Re:works both ways?

[bellings]

you know that the chinese word for computer translates to "electric brain," right? (dian nao) I wonder what the internals are called..

Wow! You know, the english word for computer translates to "computer", which is a person who does arithmetic computations all day.

And the english word for mother board translates to "mother board", which should be enough to give anyone pause about those very strange westerners...