A notorious young Chinese hacker and his three accomplices, who inflicted heavy damage to millions of computer users in the country, appeared in a court in China.

The trial of the author of the notorious computer virus Xiongmao Shaoxiang, or Panda burning joss stick, that crippled millions of computers nationwide began in the People's Court of Xiantao City in central China's Hubei Province.

Li Jun, 25, and three others all in their twenties, stand accused of writing the virus, spreading it through the Internet and causing huge damage to millions of computer users from November 2006 to March 2007.

Police say that the four defendants raked in more than USD 27,000 by selling the virus, which infects program files and flashes up an image of a panda holding three joss sticks, and can also steal the account names and passwords of online game players and popular chat sites.

The virus was listed as the worst computer virus last year by a leading anti-virus company in China. After being arrested, Li wrote a programme that could remove the virus earlier this year.

Meanwhile, according to media reports, some Western governments have said that their computer system were attacked by Chinese hackers, backed by the military.

But a Chinese military researcher, Wang Xinjun with the Academy of Military Sciences denied such allegation.

"It's very strange and surprising that only one or two websites of attacks are from China among the thousands hackers' websites, some officials and media arbitrarily blame these attacks on China," he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

Computers used in government offices and sectors like aviation and healthcare in India are less prone to internet viruses than those in China, world's second largest broadband user after the US, a study has found.

China has emerged as the second largest nation in terms of number of computers with multiple infections in government and critical infrastructure sectors, a study by US-based internet security software maker Symantec Corp said.

The high number of attacks originating in China is likely due to the rapid broadband internet growth, it said.

India has been ranked at sixth position in country-wise list for computers with multiple infections mentioned in the study - Government Internet Security Threat Report. The list has been topped by the US.

Aerospace, telecom, healthcare, financial services and agriculture were included among critical infrastructure sectors for the study.

Telecom accounted for 90 per cent of all malicious activity originating from critical infrastructure sectors and hacking was responsible for 73 per cent of identities exposed.

China was also named in top three countries in five other metrics -- malicious activity by country, top countries targeted by DoS attacks, Bot-infected computers by country, top countries of attack origin, computers with multiple infections by country.

Regarding India, the report pointed out that the presence of Rontokbro worm was seen more in India despite the infected e-mail being in Indonesian.

Substantial trade activities take place between the two countries and it is likely that many enterprise users in Indonesia communicate with counterparts in India by email.


Courtesy : Expressindia.com