The Hanoi Times - Computer viruses will continue to pose a grave risk to computer users, the Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Centre (BKIS) has warned.

Nguyen Tu Quang, Director of the BKIS, said that computer viruses, which are software programmes designed to spread among computers and interfere with their operations, will appear daily and in increasing quantity.

Viruses with “overwriting tactics” will overwrite standard files of the Windows operating system, eventually making infected computers dysfunctional or out of order, said Quang.

This is a new trend of development for computer viruses, he added.

The BKIS also said that the Ministries of Justice and Public Security have amended some clauses in the Criminal Law to deal with hi-tech criminals.

It said that the clauses, which will likely be approved by the National Assembly at the beginning of 2010, defined in detail actions such as o­nline attacks and spreading viruses. The penalties for these actions can include up to 12 years in prison.

The law is a legal framework to deal with computer criminals in Vietnam, Quang said.

BKIS’s statistics showed that there were some serious computer crimes in 2008. For example, the domain name of the P.A Vietnam Company, which specialises in IT, was controlled by hackers, and the website of Techcombank, o­ne of the big banks in Vietnam, was hacked.

According to the BKIS’s statistics, there are 33,137 computer viruses in Vietnam in 2008, of which 33,101 come from foriegn countries, and 36 written by Vietnamese.

Viruses infected computers in Vietnam 59,450,000 million times. The virus which infected the most computers was been W32.SecretW.Worm. It infected 420,000 machines