Update : 2010-05-20 |
Peter Lyon Software
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Nov 2007, Large-capacity hard disks often used by government agencies were found to contain Trojan horse viruses, Investigation Bureau officials warned that hard discs sold in Taiwan contained Trojan horse viruses, further investigations suggested that "contamination" took place when the products were in the hands of Chinese subcontractors during the manufacturing process.
On Saturday, Seagate Technology LLC, the manufacturer of the Maxtor portable hard drive, said on its Web site (www.seagate.com) that Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drives sold after August could be infected with the virus. Anti-virus software manufacturer Kaspersky Labs also issued a similar warning. The hard drive has been temporarily pulled off the shelves and is no longer available for purchase. The Investigation Bureau said the tainted portable hard drives automatically upload any information saved on the computer to Beijing Web sites without the user's knowledge . While investigating a Chinese subcontractor involved in the manufacturing process, Seagate found that a small number of drives were infected with the viruses. The company said the products from the problem factory had been scanned and all viruses had been eliminated, adding that all inventory would also be treated before the product was returned to stores. Seagate did not disclose the stage in the manufacturing process where the Chinese subcontractor installed the Trojan horse. Seagate recommended that all customers who had purchased the product install protective anti-virus software. To this end, Seagate said that Kaspersky Labs would offer all Seagate customers a 60-day fully functional version of the Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus 7.0 software for download and installation. In September, the British online information technology magazine The Register published information saying that Kaspersky Labs had found a pre-installed virus named Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah on Maxtor 3200 external hard drives sold in the Netherlands. When the virus accesses software, it looks for gaming passwords and deletes mp3 files. The publication asked Seagate to verify the information, but a company spokesperson said: "This scenario seems unlikely because the 3200 does not have any software preloaded on the drive so there is not an opportunity for a virus to be loaded. Yes, the drive is formatted, but I have never heard of a virus that lives in the master boot record." Similar case was repeated to portable hard discs. Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said. Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said. The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner's knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said. The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics 500G discs. The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information. Sensitive information may have already been intercepted by Beijing through the two Web sites, the bureau said. The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved. In recent years, the Chinese government has run an aggressive spying program relying on information technology and the Internet, the bureau said. The bureau said this was the first time it had found that Trojan horse viruses had been placed on hard discs before they even reach the market. Agents began examining hard discs on the market and found the viruses linked to the two Web sites. Anyone who has purchased this kind of hard disc should return it to the place of purchase, the bureau said. The distributor told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) that the company had sold 1,800 tainted discs to stores last month. It said it had pulled 1,500 discs from shelves, while the remaining 300 had been sold by the stores to consumers. Seagate's Asian Pacific branch said it was looking into the matter. If the stroy is true, it means a brand new disc is possibly not safe for your data. Trojan horses are there when discs are produced. So, encrypt your secret data if do not want it exposed. |