Owen Fletcher

Google's Android is picking up steam in China among both big and small mobile phone makers, and the operating system is set to move even further down the price chain in coming months.

Small Chinese companies in the southern city of Shenzhen, which is notorious for its bustling markets full of knock-off electronics, are increasingly putting the Google OS in phones.

A section of the Web site for China's state-run Xinhua news agency was found to be distributing malware last month, according to a Google malware scanning service that is still labeling the site as potentially harmful.

The "news center" section of the Xinhua's Web site, which displays a feed of the agency's stories, was found to have one scripting exploit and one Trojan on it during a scan, according to a Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page. No suspicious content was found on the site during a scan about ten days later, but the section of Xinhua's Web site is still being labeled potentially harmful in Google search results.

Dodgy salesmen in China are making money from long-known weaknesses in a Wi-Fi encryption standard, by selling network key-cracking kits for the average user.

Wi-Fi USB adapters bundled with a Linux operating system, key-breaking software and a detailed instruction book are being sold online and at China's bustling electronics bazaars. The kits, pitched as a way for users to surf the Web for free, have drawn enough buyers and attention that one Chinese auction site, Taobao.com, had to ban their sale last year.

Apple appears to have tweaked its iPhone to support a Chinese security protocol for wireless networks, as companies increasingly adopt Chinese government-backed technologies to break into the country's huge market.

The move suggests Apple may soon launch a new version of the iPhone in China with Wi-Fi, a feature that regulations previously barred.

Microsoft won a Chinese court case over pirated software used by a local insurance company, scoring a point in its ongoing fight against intellectual property violations in China.

A Shanghai court on Thursday ordered Shanghai-based Dazhong Insurance to pay Microsoft 2.2 million yuan (US$320,000) in damages for using illegal copies of Microsoft software, the U.S. company said in a statement.

A black market for satellite TV is booming in China as the middle class grows there, bringing foreign channels like CNN and MTV to a much wider audience than allowed by the government.

Satellite TV is legal only for select viewers in China. Content deemed pornographic, violent or threatening to state interests is also banned, a potential roadblock for a range of overseas programming. News stations like CNN and BBC, for instance, are unafraid to air criticisms of the Chinese government that would bring harsh punishment upon a domestic TV station. But satellite dishes that pick up those and other foreign channels, such as ESPN and HBO, have grown popular among white-collar workers despite all the rules.

Online games, music services and parts of other Web sites in China were shut down on Wednesday for a day of mourning mandated by the government after a deadly earthquake last week.

Popular online game World of Warcraft, the music download search sections offered by Google in China and by rival Baidu.com, and games inside social-networking sites were all among the affected services. The single-day shutdown is a minor example of how Chinese authorities often issue unexpected orders affecting the operations of companies here.

A Chinese official appeared to take aim at IBM as he warned recently against "Smarter Planet" projects, or the use of technology like networks of sensors in cities to gather and analyze data.

IBM has used the "Smarter Planet" slogan for wide-ranging projects including a green city lab in northeastern China. The concept, along with others like "reindustrialization" and "low-carbon economy" also put forth by developed countries, could constrain China, Li Yizhong, China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said in a speech summarized on the ministry Web site.

The information stolen from Google in cyberattacks late last year included a password system that gives users access to multiple services after just one login, according to a news report.

Google in January said it had been hit by cyberattacks believed to be launched from China that caused the theft of Google intellectual property. The stolen information included the password system, code-named Gaia after the Greek goddess of earth, The New York Times said late Monday, citing an unnamed source.

Lenovo showed off a tweaked version of Google's Android operating system on its upcoming Lephone handset, as the company also launched an application download store for the phone and other products.

Lenovo also announced a service that will automatically push e-mail and other content to the Lephone, adding more services alongside hardware in the company's new focus on mobile devices.

Mobile phones are an increasingly popular way to surf the Internet in rural China, but a "digital divide" is still growing between the country's rural and urban areas, a survey found.

Rural China had over 100 million Internet users at the end of last year, accounting for just 15 percent of the rural population, according to a report put online Thursday by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the government-controlled overseer of Internet domain names in the country. That compares to 45 percent of people online in bigger cities, a gap that has widened for the last two years, the report said.

China last year hosted more than one in four of the world's computers infected with a major variant of the Conficker worm, according to an official report, highlighting the wide reach of malware inside the country.

China had about 7 million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses infected with Conficker B at the end of last year, according to a recent annual security report posted on the Web site of China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT). The number of infections varied during the second half of the year, which the report covered, but was higher than 5 million during all but one week.