Remember that you are jacking into the very Matrix of malicious codesource when you are online in China. This specific event may have been anything from one of Windows many undocumented "features" that do as it pleases now and then to a general bug or something malicious in the form of a trojan or similar threat that scanning your disks for sensitive information (cached passwords, accounts, certificates etc). It may also have been windows own index service being ran automatically etc.
If you are "unlucky" and get hit by a so called drive-by injection or a brand new piece of malicious code in the wild, then there is no Virus or Malware scanner that will react at all. The people who writes these malicious bits of codes are extremely skilled, and by that i mean if they just had their skills on graduation papers they could just as well work for Nasa or National Security or StockExchange security. They would also probably represent the most skilled in their position then.
The majority of all these threats have their source of origin in China, Russia and Ukraine. By the time infections have spread over to most western nations the threats have been detected partially or completely in most cases. Thats why being hit by something completely transparent is more unlikely outside the Matrix core
. For someone like me this is a "fun" place to jack in and just analyze the flow (same way a bacteriologist will stand in a pool of hes own drool staring down the microscope and exploring a new bacteroid galaxy or similar). Its difficult to give a user directions how to get bulletproof because there is no such thing. But keeping backups of whats important and using a good security product (as good as it can get) will mean alot more security if disaster strikes then having none. That and the obvious "dont click suspicious links in emails or from unknown people in Chat programs etc..). Not letting your browser save the passwords prevents someone from stealing them as easily but to most people it means great degradation of usability etc.
Theres too much info around this and to most it will become as logical as Quantphysics. If anyone need advice or help feel free to pm me. They say a picture says more then thousand words. So take a look at the pic below, and you should understand the elevated threat level in China compared to back home.
You can see the current Worldmap Threat and infection rate below
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