China - Alert against Downloading Virus-infected Mooncake E-Cards

China has cautioned Web users against downloading virus-affected mooncake e-cards before the conventional Mid-Autumn Festival subsequent to a spate of Internet worm attack on hard-drives in the year 2006.

Mooncakes are bean-based sweet pastries customarily consumed and presented during the Mid-Autumn, also known as the Moon Festival, a festivity of togetherness and plenty, which took place on 25th September this year (2007). However, local sites presenting electronic adaptations have become fashionable lately.

Lately, more and more persons have opted to mail "virtual" mooncakes to their pals and relatives in order to mark the Mid-Autumn Festival. Internet sites offering mooncake e-cards has risen in popularity as the festival is approaching this year.

Even though no particular virus has been discovered up till now this year, previously, the e- cards had been identified to contain unsolicited attachments.

Pan Yanyan, an employee of Pricewaterhouse Coopers China, informed that she got a mooncake e-card in 2006, which carried a virus along with it, as reported by the news published on September 14, 2007 by CHINAdaily. In a statement, Pan said that she was very fascinated by the e-card sent on an online chat platform known as QQ and that many damaging pages had cropped up on her computer after she had opened it. She also had to reformat her disc drive totally in order to dispose off the virus.

The extensive and disordered Internet in China faces eruption of viruses and worms customarily, which are frequently distributed via the extremely famous cyber chat tools.

But the local Web supervision agency has advised people to ascertain that their anti-virus program is updated and to carry out regular safety inspection of their PCs.

Guangzhou Internet supervision department's officer had advised people to constantly check online files prior to downloading them, reported the September 14, 2007 edition of CHINAdaily.

As per China's leading antivirus software supplier, Jiangmin New Science and Technology Co Ltd, a virus called "Trojan.QQ.boker", with over ten variants, surfaced in 2005 during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and a worm that was transferred through QQ had 17 strains in the year 2006.

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