Beijing Jiangmin Science Technology Co Ltd said yesterday that it had detected a computer virus, which can specifically steal files with names such as "exam" or "test questions," possibly leading to leakage of exam papers.

The virus, named "exam theft," can infect Microsoft Word and Excel files and upload the ones with the special names to fixed IP addresses. After that, the author of the virus can get the tainted files and probably access questions in exam papers beforehand, Shanghai Daily reported Tuesday.

The alleged exam cheating has triggered a wave of concern recently after local media reported in June that so-called exam papers were available even before the College English Test, an official English level test in China, began. Questions of this year's CET Band Four, including composition topic and listening comprehension questions, were put up on message boards of several Websites in the country at 2am, seven hours before the national exam was scheduled to kick off at 9am. Each copy of the printed version of these questions was priced at hundreds of yuan in the black market.