More private computers were commandeered by hackers for malicious purposes in China in the last quarter of 2009 than in any other country, including the United States, according to a new study by an Internet security company.
These "zombie" computers are often grouped into "botnets," or armies of infected computers that can be used to send spam e-mail or attack Web sites, according to McAfee, a Silicon Valley security firm. The company, which said it collects information about Internet-based threats that target more than 100 million computers in 120 countries, said that in the last three months of 2009, about 1,095,000 computers in China and 1,057,000 in the United States were infected. Those numbers are in addition to 10 million or so previously infected computers in each country, McAfee said. The prevalence of botnets is a sign of how vulnerable computer networks are to infiltration, a subject of increasing international debate as companies and governments seek to defend their computer systems from intruders.
Last month, Google announced that its networks had been penetrated by attacks originating in China. The Chinese government denied any involvement, saying that hacking in is against the law. There was no indication that the attack involved botnets, experts said. In a Jan. 21 speech about Internet freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton advanced the notion of cyberspace as a "global networked commons" and urged the creation of "norms of behavior" among states. Echoing a key principle behind NATO, she said: "An attack on one nation s networks can be an attack on all."
She declared that "countries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation."
Some experts have said that Clinton s call for accountability and norms is complicated by the fact that the United States has so many infected computers.
One reason computers in China are so vulnerable to botnets may be that software piracy is common and computer users often have not updated the patches on their machines. In fact, the number of zombie computers in a country says more about the vulnerability of the computers than about who infected them.
China has steadfastly denied that it supports or engages in hacking and that it penetrates U.S. firms computers to steal technology and trade secrets to help state companies- whether by bots or any other tool.
Experts say that the United States, which is highly networked and dependent on the Internet for commerce and the running of industry, is the most vulnerable of all countries to cyberattack
