The Sobig.F worm may have attacked 30 percent of China's poorly protected Internet users, wreaking havoc on more than 20 million computers, business executives and officials said yesterday.
China's growing online population has been easy prey to the virus, which has exploited a low level of awareness and a widespread absence of efficient anti-virus software to infect computers across the country, they said.
"We've never seen anything like it," said Hao Ting, a spokeswoman for Beijing Rising Technology, an Internet security company.
"People, who may not be totally aware of the danger, simply open their e-mail and don't discover it's a virus until it's too late," she said.
Beijing Rising Technology arrived at the estimate that 30 percent are impacted by the virus by analyzing data such as the massive number of customers who approached the company about the virus in recent days, she said.
According to the most recent available statistics, China had 68 million Internet users by the end of June, putting the world's most populous nation second behind the US in terms of people online.
The China National Computer Virus Emergency Center, a unit under the Ministry of Public Security, was working overtime this weekend trying to contain Sobig.F.
"This virus is very serious," said Zhang Jian, a software engineer with the center, which is based in Tianjin, a city near Beijing. "Currently, all I can say is the virus is spreading very fast."
The virus has found ideal conditions to multiply in China, because many users do not have adequate, updated anti-virus software installed, according to Zhang.
"The computers don't have effective protection, and once one computer is affected it becomes the source of the further spread of the virus," he said.
Despite Beijing Rising Technology's estimate of the number of users affected, the emergency center said there is no telling yet exactly how many Chinese e-mail users have been hit.
"But it can probably be controlled within one week," said Zhang.
The Sobig.F virus, a "worm" virus so-called because of its ability to infect computer operating systems without human intervention, multiplies by using e-mail addresses it finds in computers it infects.
Experts have warned it is the fastest propagation system yet encountered.
Coming so soon after the MS-Blast and Lovesan viruses, computer defense experts had earlier warned that cyber-space now faces a major new threat.
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