Infection warning
Friday, March 14th, 2008Is there some sort of revenge being meted out on unsuspecting gadget buyers? Is it sabotage or just apathy?
The Associated Press is finding that some very popular gadgets are coming to Best Buy and Target (US) stores preloaded with viruses. This type of cyber warfare used to be the domain of discontented geeks labouring in the darkness of their parents’ basements and attempting to make names for themselves or get some sort of revenge on the public at large - probably for calling them geeks.
Now it seems whoever is doing this to Apple I-Pods, digital picture frames and TomTom navigation gear. Security experts say the problem appears to be lax control in Chinese factories where many of the devices are being manufactured. They malicious software is entering the gadgets near the end of production, during the testing phase. The viruses are sometimes capturing passwords and spewing out spam.
Long before I knew anything about how viruses work or before I was wise enough to install good virus detection software or a firewall, I was an unwitting spam spewer. If it happens to you once, if you lost your dignity and had everyone in your email inbox get barraged with what SEEMED to be useless and repeating emails from you, you’d be very wary in the future. And you’d be extra careful about using these gizmos with their potential infections.
