Viruses Blast 1 Million Chinese Computers

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 userssaw their machines attacked.   According to the Chinese anti-virus company Jiangmin, over 118,000 PCs crashed on October 6 alone, a story inChina Daily said. More than 24,000 different viruses were detected.   However, it was one in particular that worried experts at another anti-viruscompany, 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 ofKingsoft, told China Daily,   "It will also automatically search the keywords, including ‘anti-virus, Kingsoft and Kaspersky,’ and coercively close theprograms. 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 behindthe 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 ofcomputer users.