August 24, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-us-Sani 25

BEIJING, Aug 23: Millions of computers across China were feared infected by the Sobig.F Internet worm on Saturday, as the virus’s rampage through the United States appeared to slow.

Business executives and officials in China estimated that 30 per cent — around 20 million — of the country’s poorly protected Internet users may have been attacked by the virus.

China’s growing online population has been easy prey for Sobig.F, which has exploited a low level of awareness and a widespread absence of efficient anti-virus software to infect computers across the country.

“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.

Sobig.F, a “worm” virus so called for its ability to infect computer operating systems without human intervention, multiplies by using e-mail addresses it finds in infected computers.

Experts have warned it is the fastest propagating system yet encountered.

The virus does not paralyse a particular computer but it does considerably slow the machine’s network and can grind servers to a halt with unsolicited e-mails known as “spam”.

Beijing Rising Technology arrived at the estimate that 30 per cent are impacted by the virus by analysing data such as the massive number of customers with questions in recent days, she said.

Recent statistics show that China had 68 million Internet users by the end of June. —AFP