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."

Comments

Filtering and viruses

[TibbonZero]

If China's gov't can filter so much of the content that their citizens view, you would think that they would somehow figure out how to filter viruses in email attachments and stuff (which is possible)

Or PERHAPS, the name of the Virus is Win32.China.Is.Spying.On.Its.Citzens.Virus

Hmm

10,000 lbs per acer

[red5]

I know it's a tired argument but most of the news in china is made up.

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?

The FLu season

[goombah99]

Its widely agreed that most flu come from asia, china specifically. Indeed this is what deterimes which flu you get vaccinated for each winter: they look at china and see what they've caught in the precedding month. Some beleive the new flus arise out of livestock practices of mixing ducks, pigs and humans in close proximity creating a host (duck) where the flu mutates quickly without harming the host, a stepping stone where it adapts (pigs) which are similar to humans, and then a final host (human) that can easily deliver it to humans.

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?

[gpinzone]

80%?! I thought the majority of China is using Linux? What happened to all that press about Linux taking over Asia? I guess pirated Windows is still considered "free software."

Re:government propaganda

[SirSlud]

[sarcasm]

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:works both ways?

[Urox]

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.

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?

[omega_cubed]

I scanned the whole site. There's no mention of such a survey on the site. I don't actually think the survey is conducted by antivirus-china.org.cn/

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