The first man to be arrested in China for virus-writing goes by the name of Li Jun, a 25 year-old man from Wuhan, who was arrested last month for allegedly selling copies of Panda. In an effort to make an example of Li, state police said they made Li write software that would remove the worm, but after analyzing the software, Symantec says this program fails to undo many of the file and registry changes made by Panda and is completely ineffective against some variants of the malware. Panda, which is also known as Fujacks and Radoppan.T, was written in October 2006 and has since spread widely within China. Li made 100,000 renminbi ($12,876) by selling copies of the worm to criminals, who then distributed it. Li"s uninstaller tool comes with an apology from the worm-writer himself, claiming that the program was written for research purposes.
"This removal tool is not effective against most of the samples we have tested against and isn"t fully effective against any of them. For Li, perhaps he may have learned the hard way that ... it is much easier to write a program to cause destruction than it is to repair the damage," wrote Symantec researcher Hon Lau on his blog.