Chinese National Day weekend holiday has been used by malicious hackers to infect more than 1 million computers says Jiangmin Co, a leading Chinese anti-virus company.

Oct. 6 was the scene of more than 118,000 crashed computers as detected by the company’s monitoring systems. "Viruses have been extremely active during the long vacation because more people chose to stay at home and surf the Internet, shopping online or playing online games," He Gongdao, an anti-virus expert at Jiangmin, said on Monday.

Li Jun, the man behind the "panda" virus that infected numerous computers earlier this year, was sentenced to four years in prison by the People's Court in Xiantao, Hubei Province, China.

The culprit was not alone in his cyber act of destruction and three of his collaborators all aged in their twenties, were given sentences of between one and two-and-a-half years.

The insider threat has become the most reported security incident in 2007 as stated by the respected U.S. Computer Security Institute (CSI).

Almost 500 top security personnel from US corporations and government agencies took part in the survey and 59 percent of them cited insider incidents to be more of a security concern as opposed to virus and spyware which was chosen by 52 percent.

AOL introduced the new AOL Internet Security Central (http://safety.aol.com), offering a comprehensive suite of free safety and security tools designed to ensure a safer and more secure online experience, and provide overall PC protection. Included in the offering is the new McAfee® VirusScan® Plus -- Special edition from AOL, offering essential protection against viruses, spyware and intruders at no charge through AOL.com.

In a recent court case that was decided earlier this month, the police had used a keystroke logger to record the typing of a suspected ecstasy manufacturer who has been using encryption to thwart the police.