09 October 2008, 14:23

Asus warns of a virus infection in shipping Eee Boxes

The Japanese division of Taiwanese computer and component manufacturer Asus is warning customers that shipping versions of its Eee Box B202 desktop computer are infected with a virus. According to Asus, the virus is located on the D drive in a file called recycled.exe. When the user opens the D drive, the virus is triggered and immediately starts copying itself onto the C drive and any connected USB media.

Why the virus is there, though, and how it got onto the disks, Asus is not saying. Nor will it comment if infected machines are shipping outside of Japan, although The Register has found a different infection on a UK unit.

Apart from its apologies, Asus is offering its customers assistance with the problem.

Such infections are not new – in 2006 and 2007 TomTom shipped GPS units containing a virus. Embarrassingly for Asus, this story follows less than a month after it was revealed that Asus had shipped a laptop recovery DVD with a folder containing a software "crack" for WinRAR, multiple stolen software licence keys and confidential Asus and Microsoft internal documents.

(lghp)

« previous | next »

Print Version | Send by email | Permalink: http://h-online.com/-737603