Anonymous hackers on Friday planted a backdoor virus program on the Website of China Unionpay (www.chinaunionpay.com), the country's only national electronic payment network operator, that may result in customer information being leaked, Xinhua has learnt.

The backdoor program, Backdoor.BlackHole.2005.a, is capable of hijacking customer's computers when they visit the Website, said engineers at Rising Corporation, a leading Chinese computer security company.

The engineers said the backdoor program was designed to attack computers installed with video cameras, through which the hackers could easily obtain access to the owner's private information.

The program, however, is a relatively old version that could be killed by anti-virus programs, the engineers said, adding that computer users should update and activate their anti-virus software.

China Unionpay was not immediately available for comment, as phone calls to their Shanghai headquarters went unanswered.

China Unionpay has over 172 million customers in China.

Source: Xinhua