Virus writers have China in their hands

A record number of China's computers have been hit by viruses this year, according to a ministry survey.

About 85 per cent of computers in China were affected by viruses in 2003. This is 1.5 percentage points higher than 2002 and 25.5 percentage points higher than 2001, said the survey.

Carried out by the Ministry of Public Security, the survey was carried out over May and June this year, according to official news agency Xinhua.

Some 63 per cent of users surveyed said they suffered losses as a result of viruses, a slight drop compared with a year ago.

Infected downloads, booby-trapped websites and email attachments were the main avenues of infection for those surveyed.

Ignorance and lack of defensive tools are the reasons behind the high infection rate, said Xinhua.

Earlier this year, the Slammer and Blaster worms hit China hard, thanks to poor awareness of network security in the country. In addition, there have been theories that a large number of viruses in the wild come from hacker groups based in China.