The increase in broadband connections in China has contributed to a 37 percent jump in the number of computers in the country attacked by bots, or programs that let hackers remotely control user machines, security firm Symantec said Tuesday.

The phenomenon shows the downside that comes with the spread of Internet connectivity in the world’s most populous nation. China had the largest increase in computers infected with bots, making it second only to the United States, said Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report.

The report covered only the second half of 2005.

Botnets, or bot armies, are large networks of thousands of machines under the control of an attacker who could potentially use the computers for criminal activities, including stealing financial information and proprietary data stored on a computer (see Q&A: Bot-buster Merrick Furst).

The rise in the number of bots also led to a jump in such attacks that originated from the country, with bot assaults from China increasing by 153 percent.

In addition to the increased adoption of broadband, high use of pirated software, which increases a computer’s vulnerability to malicious software, contributed to the rise in bot attacks, experts said.

Symantec said its report also showed an increase in cyber crime threats entailing the potential theft of information that can eventually be sold or traded. Of the top 50 malicious code samples the security firm had gathered, some 80 percent represented threats that could reveal confidential information, up from 74 percent during the same period in 2004.

Many attackers are using bot networks and targeted attacks on web applications and web browsers to steal data, said Symantec.

Cyber-crime-related threats also gained momentum because of the wider use of crimeware, which are software tools built with the purpose of committing online scams and stealing information from consumers and businesses, said Symantec.

A Spam Haven
Botnets are not the only problem that China faces. More than 15 percent of worldwide spam originates from the country (see U.S. Tops Spammers List). One reason could be the high use of pirated software. Software piracy rates top 90 percent in China and are the third highest in the world, according to anti-piracy watchdog Business Software Alliance.

“If the operating system and software is pirated, then users may not be receiving the latest security updates,” said Graham Cluley, senior technical consultant for Sophos, a London-based security firm.

Less-secure software leaves computers susceptible to hackers who could use malware to potentially hijack the computers and turn them into zombies to relay spam. More than 60 percent of spam today is generated from zombie computers, estimates Sophos.

Recently, the Chinese government said it would propose anti-spam legislation that will require all advertising emails to carry “AD” in their header to identify them as spam. The government hopes that will regulate the business and cut down on spam that originates from China.