Trojan on TomTom navigation systems

No cases of viruses or worms disabling navigation systems have been reported to date; however infected TomTom systems suggest that this may not be too far off. The vendor has stated that a small number of TomTom GO 910 systems have been infected with malware. The problem apparently affects a batch manufactured between September and November 2006 with software version 6.51. The Windows trojans Perlovga.a and Small.qp are present in the files copy.exe and host.exe on the GO 910's hard drive. They do not infect the navigation system itself, as it uses Linux. This is not therefore likely to affect functionality. If the device is connected to a PC and a backup made, if anti-virus software is installed it is likely to raise the alarm.

TomTom is not aware of any cases of Windows systems being infected in this way. The infectious file can be deleted from the hard drive either manually or using anti-virus software. The vendor has taken steps to ensure that such an incident cannot happen again.

In October 2006, Apple was forced to warn customers who had bought an iPod Video of a pre-installed Windows worm, which had infected the device during production. This was shortly after McDonalds Japan admitted that some customers had won infected MP3 players in a sales promotion.

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