The spread of computer virus "panda burning joss stick" that
infected millions of computers across China in the past few months
has rung alarm of rampant cyber crimes and indicated that it is a
"pressing job" to formulate a law on the cyber safety, a lawmaker
said Wednesday.
"Cyber crimes have been on the rise in China, with the rapid
development of the Internet," said Zhang Xuedong, who is attending
the ongoing annual full session of China's top legislature -- the
National People's Congress (NPC).
The virus program "panda burning joss stick", also known as
"Xiongmao Shaoxiang" in Chinese, was wrote by Li Jun, a 25-year-old
resident in the central China city of Wuhan. Since he let the virus
loose on the Internet last October, millions of computers have been
infected nationwide, and mutations of it have been found even after
Li was apprehended by the police.
This incident "has once again rung the alarm that cyber crimes
are rampant in China and it is a pressing job to promulgate a law
on cyber security," said Zhang.
The law on cyber security should give equal protection to all
lawful computer network users, he added.
In 2005, he said, 80 percent of computer operating systems in
the country were infected by virus, 728,000 new items of computer
virus were reported, and 9,100 Web sites were attacked by hackers,
including 2,027 government Web sites. Another 391 government Web
sites were attacked by hackers in January 2006.
"What deserves our high attention is few of the cyber crime
cases have been handled," he said, adding that the absence of a law
against cyber crimes might be partly attributed to increasing cyber
crimes.
(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2007)