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Internet Cafes Threatened Ahead Of Olympics
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-07-14
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Throngs of visitors to China during the Summer Olympics will include many who want to check up on their email or other online resources. That could be a problem.
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Circulation of a new rootkit aroused attention from the Chinese research community. What they have found so far looks like a major problem for the operators of Internet cafes, which hold plenty of popularity in China.
Security vendor McAfee said on its Avert Labs blog that the piece of malware, dubbed MachineDog, harbors a particularly insidious threat to cafe owners and how they generally protect the systems used by the public.
"Most internet bars and cafes rely on hard disk protection software excessively," McAfee noted. "Once their machines are infected, the administrator just restores from backups made by the protection software. This malware takes advantage of this contrived neglect."
The problem stems from MachineDog dropping a driver into the kernel of the operating system. Once in place, an administrator likely won't detect it as many of these cafes may not be running security software to complement their hard drive security methods.
Visitors to China for the Olympics may be best served by limiting their usage of Internet cafes to general, non-personal surfing. Many will want to check their email, or even other services that use secure http connections. China's active malicious hacker community makes us wary of recommending this at Internet cafes.
View All Articles by David Utter
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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