A Chinese computer virus expert says the fast-spreading "Code Red" Internet worm was not made in China, despite Web site defacings that said "Hacked by Chinese."
The worm, which could slow the Internet worldwide, had surfaced little in China, experts said.
"One thing I can be sure of is that it was not created by a Chinese person. Its appearance and its spreading did not start in China," said Wang Jianfeng, assistant manager of technical support at Ruixing Computer Development, a virus protection company in Beijing.
Ruixing, which has a global network of monitoring systems, had not received any calls about the worm in China, he said. Ronald Dick, director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Centre (NIPC), said the worm had infected more than 250,000 computer systems on July 19, a day of heavy attacks.
In last week's hits, some US government sites showed the message "Hacked by Chinese," using a popular term for illegally breaking into a computer system.
In Hong Kong, the Computer Emergency Response Team, a government-funded body, said it has received two complaints of attack and many queries about the worm since July 20.
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