Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected 362
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."
Filtering and viruses (Score:4, Interesting)
Or PERHAPS, the name of the Virus is Win32.China.Is.Spying.On.Its.Citzens.Virus
Hmm
10,000 lbs per acer (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wonder what would China have to gain by saying all their computers are 0w3d? Is it the "National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center" trying to get more funding?
Re:That must be why... (Score:1, Interesting)
The FLu season (Score:5, Interesting)
so now we have a computer virus incubator too.
which leads to an interesting thought. maybe some days viruses will be created by computers and breed like flu does. They will gather strenght in a compliant population (china) before emerging to the real world.
Viruses?! China uses Linux, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most Chinese don't own the computer they use... (Score:3, Interesting)
Earlier this year, once such cafe caught fire and 40 users died. The PRC responded by shutting down thousands of these establishments... at least for a while.
Spam related? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:government propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
meanwhile, at cnn, abcnews, bbc, cbc, journalists are hard at work empowering you, a free man, with bias-free and editorization-free content.
the fact that they make money doing this is just a nice bonus to the fuzzy feelings they get in their tummy from helping you feel^H^H^H^Hbe a free citizen of planet earth.
[/sarcasm]
to be honest, sometimes i respect an out-of-the-closet dictatorial regime over the 'dont say it out loud' vested econo/poli agendas of major media conglomerates who still have the gall to act as if they dont have any vested interest in various stories/news
in other words, better to bias your content for a political/social goal than a purely financial one, although I appreciate that neither system ultimately serves humans on the basis of "what news is important".
please note I'm not condoning China's political system, only somewhat envious of the transparency in so far as agendas go
as a final huzzah, i believe that this article is about how many people *think* they were infected, not how many actuall were, so it wouldn't really be justification for some sort of tin-foil-hat conceived agenda.
Re:Easily believeable (Score:3, Interesting)
While in Hong Kong as a turist some aquaintences took us to a shop that specialized in pirate-ware. It had rows and rows of pirated CD's.
Only half of them worked when I got home and tried them........um I mean whan a friend tried them. Some were truncated at the end, and others were too thin to spin properly in the drive. Masking tape helped some.
I think in Chinese thinking, intellectual property "rights" is kind of a silly idea. It is not something tangable, and thus not protectable in philosophy. They tend not to trust banks either, because the money becomes "virtual" instead of something physical. Perhaps they have been burned by banks in the past. I don't know.
Is Richard Stallman Chinese by chance?
In Conton they sold phoney tiger corpses in the street. That is good because tigers are nearly extinct. Some things are good to pirate.
Re:works both ways? (Score:5, Interesting)
What was scary is that I stayed in a 5 star hotel, went to their "on-site" doctor, and he swabbed iodine over a bite that had been infected on my leg (andwas swollen 6 inches across) and thought that would take care of it. Fortunately, the tour guide took me to a "hospital" where the doctor there gave me antibacterial drugs to fight the infection.
Interestingly enough to keep this on topic: you know that the chinese word for computer translates to "electric brain," right? (dian nao) I wonder what the internals are called..
Re:Agreed - Anyone read Chinese? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I did find something rather amusing:
On the website, when ever they found a new virus appearing in China, they list a newsreport saying:
The virus ZZZ now invades China.
And judging by the post dates, the great firewall is actually quite nice. Moreover, they have the best vius protection/know how tutorial I've ever seen on any website, and admittedly, for a Chinese speaker, the way they describe syptoms and methods of removal for individual viruses are much more friendly then even synmantec.
W
Re:Easily believeable (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
terms (Score:2, Interesting)
Piracy and Music (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting...
Re:Incorrect (Score:2, Interesting)
What the AV authorities really should be saying is simply:
A) Keep all your software patched (MS or not), and
B) Do not run a program if you're not sure you can trust it; if you can't handle that, just don't open any attachments that you're not expecting.
If you follow these two rules, and there are no undiscovered exploits, I can guarantee that you will never be infected.
Note that users can follow these simple rules without disrupting their usual email habits. On the other hand, if you tell people to "Stop using Outlook, "Never open attachments (even jpegs?)," or "Don't read email from anyone you don't know," they will probably just ignore you, and they'll be just as vulnerable as before.
They buy the machines preinfected! (Score:1, Interesting)
When we bought some of these machines for our China offices, they even came with the latest viruses preinstalled! What service. Wipe delete and reinstall OS. Get back most of the hard drive too.
The way most PCs are managed over there, to have a PC is to have a virus. Most people I've met seem to accept that getting a virus is normal.
It is freaky.