Insignia Digital Photo Frames Shipped With a Virus
http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/null/66647
Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:14PM EST
A frightening new computer virus is making the rounds, and it's coming in through an unlikely source: Those cute, innocuous, and unavoidable digital picture frames.
SFGate has the story of a nasty piece of malware that has been riding along with Insignia brand photo frames, which were largely sold in Best Buy and Sam's Club stores (and possibly other outlets) over the holidays. The virus, which I've yet to find an actual name for, is reportedly "easy to clean," according to Insignia, but at least one IT expert (who was running antivirus software) tells a horror story about it, saying it took him 12 hours to rebuild his own, infected machine. All from simply plugging the frame into his PC.
This is hardly the first time that a technology product has shipped with a virus infection. Apple made headlines in 2006 for shipping a Windows virus on numerous video iPods. In recent years, products from Creative Labs, TomTom, Seagate, and even a cheap McDonald's gadget have come from the factory bearing unwanted gifts.
These are neat little gadgets and make it easier to share 'round a grotto meeting (without making a big presentation of it) or a trip enroute to/from a cave the digital pictures a lot of cavers are taking these days. Problem/question is; is there a way to check these devices before hooking them up to one's camera/computer beforehand to ensure it's "clean"? Just because there's one brand doesn't mean that other brands would/could be clean from this crap.
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