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."
goldmine for software publishers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:4, Informative)
The idea is that you must visit the vendor's web site frequently and download the latest update.
Tor
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:5, Funny)
Did I mention that now would be an excellent time to wipe that hard drive and install Linux?
Think next time, McFly!
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:3, Informative)
Like Norton Anti-Virus? I assume the hundreds of CDs that float around pirated come from China, but I could be wrong. Anyhow, I know of many many local computer OEMs that sell them with systems. They work just the same as regular copies.
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:2, Insightful)
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:goldmine for software publishers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, not anymore. Some dumbass on Slashdot posted the backdoor, and McAfee fixed it.
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:3, Insightful)
Further clarification (Score:2, Funny)
This brief but rather trenchant opinion piece on the same subject ran yesterday in Asahi Shimbun; reading it, you can see that the media in Japan (as usual) have a considerably firmer grasp on what's happening in China than the American media...
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:4, Funny)
You kniw your screwed when you go to open outlook and Mr. Paperclip exclaims "FALUN GONG IS GOOD!"
Re:goldmine for software publishers (Score:3, Funny)
I always thought it was just if Mr. Paperclip appeared at all...
Thank Goodness! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank Goodness! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank Goodness! (Score:2)
Re:Thank Goodness! (Score:5, Funny)
In Other news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Other news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In Other news (Score:5, Informative)
reminds me of AIDS in Africa. No end in sight.
Re:In Other news (Score:3, Informative)
It's kind of nitpicky, but in China they use the Yuan not the Yen.
1 Yuan = 14.9331 Yen = 0.120817 USD
Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
They may not have been infected at all.
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Funny)
The best part was that she took it to a repair shop where I assume the employees either played along or took her for a ride. They returned her computer a few days later and told her they gave it a liver transplant. She was very proud of that fact that she knew more about computers than I did.
works both ways? (Score:5, Funny)
But it starts to get scary if you get sick in China, and the doctors ask which brand of harddrive you want installed in place of your appendix.
Re:works both ways? (Score:5, Funny)
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:works both ways? (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Re:works both ways? (Score:3, Informative)
Dude, you want to hear something really scary? I went to an American doctor with a cold, and he gave me an antibiotic! Is that insane, or what? Those american doctors are complete and total fucktards, I think.
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Incorrect (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Incorrect (Score:4, Funny)
What a dumbshit! Real repair shops recognize the real problem was the Flux Capacitor. My local PC shop told me so. Those Chinese technicians are such greedy snakes. Thank heaven for Yankey Honesty.
Re:Incorrect (Score:3, Funny)
Well, since every spam message I get from that part of the world reads like a Sircam virus email, I'm not suprised that they all believe they've been exposed.
"Engrish" as a second language, you know...
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Agreed - Anyone read Chinese? (Score:5, Funny)
Then the results are highly questionable. As it was an online survey. Without knowing the methods for all we know it could have been a website poll... and considering it's the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center doing the survey then individuals completing the survey are probably more likely to be affiliated with such a site because they've *had* a virus.
Does any one actually read Chinese so they could give us the full story? The site's homepage is here:
http://www.antivirus-china.org.cn/
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:Agreed - Anyone read Chinese? (Score:2, Funny)
On the other hand, the results can be *very* reliable if they follow these steps:
1. Infect the server running the poll.
2. Ask, "Do you run a firewall?"
There will be a direct correlation between the percentage of people who answer "no" and the percentage of virus-infected machines.
Filtering and viruses (Score:4, Interesting)
Or PERHAPS, the name of the Virus is Win32.China.Is.Spying.On.Its.Citzens.Virus
Hmm
Re:Filtering and viruses (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Filtering and viruses (Score:2)
Ya don't think that some of the viruses are to spy on the chinesse public? nah...
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:10,000 lbs per acer (Score:2)
Because of this massive virus infection, the Chinese gub'mint must take complete control of its citizens computers. US gub'mint to soon follow suit because freedom-hating Iraqi virus writers are threatening our country's freedoms. To prevent our freedom, we must destroy it.
Re:10,000 lbs per acer (Score:2, Insightful)
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]
This proves what we knew all along... (Score:4, Funny)
on a serious note:
My computer has only been infected twice, both of them rare and harmless viruses. In the past year I have had zero infections... unless you are downloading every single program you can get your hands on or are opening attachments like an AOL newb viruses aren't that big of a problem. (or Kazaa users, but I won't go there. I use WinMX)
Re:This proves what we knew all along... (Score:5, Funny)
The worse virus I ever got was one that trolled slashdot in my name posting stupid jokes and random ascii, ruining my karma.
Glad I fixed it, though, because it was embarrassing ###% Hitler FuckHead Donky Dong!
Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Touched by a Virus (Score:5, Funny)
Tonight on Touched by a Virus, Gordon believes that he has been infected by "Millisa". Little does Gordon know that Millisa is spawning his CHILD!
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, or "Timmy was touched repeatedly by the Catholic priest"
Not very surprising, Language barrier plays a role (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I'm of two minds (Score:2, Funny)
On the other hand, this could be the start of something big. There is reason to believe that "junk DNA", which comprises about 90% of the human genome, is leftover virus DNA. How much of human evolution was driven by viral infection either indirectly or directly? Might the same happen to computers? I think it might be smart to leave China's computii infected and see if an AI evolves. Put up a firewall, of course, in case of a Predator scenario.
Re:I'm of two minds (Score:2)
Umm, I think you meant Species, right?
Re:No, he didn't (Score:2)
Species, however, is pretty close to what he was talking about with the predator (lowercase) evolving unpredictably from bad DNA.
Re:Dear god you are stupid (Score:2)
Nothing in the post was factual, thus the humor in getting the wrong movie.
Ya, you probably claim to be able to interpret modern art, too. See, what he was really talking about was Total Recall. I know this is true, because it has a three breasted mutant whore who came from corrupted DNA, like he was saying. ;-)
You, sir, are what's wrong with Slashdot.
Good line, funny actually. Why am I what's wrong with slashdot when I merely suggested a movie that more closely fit the scenario he was talking about?
Dear god you are stupid.
what about in US? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what about in US? (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2, Funny)
Solution: Open Source Anti-virus Software (Score:5, Informative)
attacked? (Score:3, Funny)
My computer is attacked on a daily basis, but my computer is virus free...
Quote from the article... (Score:5, Funny)
I find it disturbing that in the year 2002, Reuters still has to explain to people what a "computer virus" is.
Jesus Christ. What's next, a description of the keyboard as "that typewriter thing on the desk" and the monitor as "the TV thing with all the pictures" ?
Re:Quote from the article... (Score:5, Funny)
I do online tech-support for an internet company and unfortunately I have to do that far too often.
Me: Hit the Escape or E-S-C key. It's at the top left corner of your keyboard.
Cust.: I don't see it.
Me: Are you looking at the top left corner of your keyboard?
Cust.: Yes.
Me: Are you looking at the top left corner of your keyboard or your screen?
Cust.: What's the difference?
Me: The keyboard is the typewriter thing
Cust.: [silence]
Me: It's where you place your fingers with all the number and letter keys.
Cust: Oh, okay!
Sorry, I had to vent...
Touched = Infected? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Oh boy. (Score:5, Funny)
These people have robot dogs, and robot fish, and giant robots with guns for heads.
Yeah, that's right Norton, get on the m*therfucker.
Re:Oh boy. (Score:4, Funny)
Hahah, yeah, it's funny not to know the difference between China and Japan!
ME SO SOLLY! ME NO RIKEY!
Ass.
more virus makes me less happy (Score:2)
it's a good thing all my illegal VHS tapes I have can't be played on my system =]
Easily believeable (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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:Easily believeable (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Chinese math.. (Score:5, Funny)
100-16 = 80%
Must have a loose nut on the old abacus.
Re:Chinese math.. (Score:2)
Viruses?! China uses Linux, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Viruses?! China uses Linux, right? (Score:2)
Linux in China is a big movement that is begining to start, but it will certainly take some time to become adopted. Nobody has been *forced* to use Linux.
Re:Viruses?! China uses Linux, right? (Score:2)
Why? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Does this mean... (Score:3, Funny)
Just wondering.
-Goran
crisis and opportunity (Score:4, Funny)
Spam related? (Score:2, Interesting)
Aware Computer Users (Score:2)
If you asked the same question in an European country or in the US, the result would be "84 percent of computer users reported 'Huh?!' when asked whether their computer had been infected by a virus during the year". The environment is naturally much more hostile there in China, with over 90% piracy rate. It is actually a small miracle that "infected computers percentage" is lower than piracy rate.
Re:Aware Computer Users - nope, AntiVirus theft... (Score:3, Funny)
Survey methodology? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Do they know the difference? (Score:2, Funny)
BRUE SCLEEN OF DEATH!
Re:Do they know the difference? (Score:3, Funny)
And every single one of them... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And every single one of them... (Score:2)
You're blaming the road. You should blame the car driver.
Re:And every single one of them... (Score:2)
Sounds good to me. (Score:2)
An easy fix ... (Score:2, Funny)
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Well before everyone gets all ready to donate anti-virus software to china, please read the article. They don't mean 80% of all computers in china right at this moment have a virus. They're talking about 80% of the computers they sampled, they MAY have been infected (at one time). I'm sure in america the numbers pretty high too, there's just no statistics (yet). So here we go, according to ME, 90% of all computers I've ever fixed in America at one time had a virus.
Vietnam (Score:3, Informative)
Infected or exposed to? 80% isn't a high number (Score:3, Insightful)
And as they say about "China Daily"... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hrm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:government propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Obligatory Microsoft Slam (Score:2)
Hey, you're a poet, and weren't aware of the fact!
I can picture it: (Score:2)