U.S.-China Surveillance

From the Computerworld story:

A signature update to Symantec’s anti-virus software crippled thousands of Chinese PCs Friday when the security software took two critical Windows .dll files for malware.

….

“With these files removed, Windows XP will no longer start up, and even the system Safe Mode no longer functions,” said one user writing to the alt.comp.anti-virus newsgroup this morning.

Although Symantec has posted a fiix for the problem, it’s largely unworkable in China, since “many Chinese users don’t have a restore CD because they’re running pirated copies of Windows.”

Late Friday, China time, the Chinese Internet Security Response Team (CISRT) posted an alert on its English-language blog. “It’s a terrible day for lots of Chinese users (especially Enterprise Users) who use Norton products today,” CISRT said.