McAfee study says;China leads the world in hacked computers 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 gove