News Asus ships malware with Eee Boxes

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/10/09/asus-ships-virus-with-eee-boxes/1

Certain revisions of Asus' well-regarded Eee Box ultra-small desktop PC have been accidentally distributed with a nasty worm forming part of the default install.

 

No link from review to forums.

This is what, the second of third time Asus screwed up with weird files coming on CDs and HDDs? Its time their quality-control took some decent action.

 

This is one reason I do a clean install of an operating system every time I get a new system. I actually build my own but things such as the Eee PC should be clean installed, especially with the Asus reputation.

 

wow really what is the deal, do they have an employee with a serious grudge and is trying to hurt the company or what????

 

Even if they did have a virus that steals the log ins for online games I can't see that being a huge issue... but it is shocking that they could have let them through.

 

Virus definitions are continually being updated by various anti-virus software companies to detect and presumably clean new infections. That being said, there is always a gap in time between when the new virus appears and the update. In that respect, any computer can become infected by a brand new virus that is not currently identified or tagged as a damaging program. Any computer connected online has the potential to be infected at any moment by some newly created virus. This sort of discovery should not surprise anyone.

Even those who do clean installs still run the risk of getting a computer virus. Do you not have to get online to update your OS and antivirus software? In that short amount of time your computer may be even more vulnerable to virus then the factory install, especially if you are installing from OEM disks that are woefully outdated. Even with high speed internet access it takes time to download updates and (in some cases) may involve several reboots and a new connection to the internet in between to get more updates.

 

This can happen very easy on HDD recovery due to the way asus and HP/compaq make sure product recovery on an d: drive that is norm setup so your cant access it norm pops up with an message but the inportant part is disk is still writable so if the pcs are been reviewed as it seems what has happened

there can be the problem when you do an Full product recover from the harddisk (format option or any option) the recovery drive is not wiped cleaned so once the pc has been fully recovered the virus.exe/autorun.ini is left as it is harmless untill you try and click on the d: drive and it is autorun

this problem can happen on acers as well as alot of them have them split 48:48:2 C: OS / D: Data that is not wiped on recover and an Hidden recover partition so it can put an auto run virus onto that drive

and to lordpyrinc comments, XP sp2/SP3 and vista OS 99% of the virus are user fault for running them and ignoring 2 warning on XP and 3 if your useing vista (UAC) asumeing IE7 used and not pressing Ctrl or popup blocker is not turned off
are not protected from anti virus software as thay cant realy be picked up by uptodate antivirus scanners as thay change to offen the problem above has happened most likey due to that the pcs have been passed around (as the news reports that not the same virus and been used by reviewers) Full recovery has been done But that does not reset the recovery drive if it is listed as an drive letter

 

This product line seems to be loaded with malware for some odd reason. We have had it twice now happen at two random stores. We buy a EEE PC 900 and find that there is a worm (I believe the NOOH worm) sitting comfortably on the machine out-of-the-box! The worm's symptoms are as follows: Command prompt is disabled, task manager is disabled, registry editor is disabled, every time you choose to show the hidden files in view options it reverts back to the do not show setting. So far I have not yet completely neutralized the worm but I've been able to find some of it's tracks: an autorun.inf on the d: partition with a companion sys.exe file. A similar problem was reported with the Desktop version of the EEE machine. The guys at The Register and PC advisor resound the same findings. This is not just disconcerting, it is outrageous that ASUS should allow such incompetence to reach out and damage their customers' networked environments. Perhaps ASUS considers the Middle Eastern market a garbage disposal dump...