Bureau warns on tainted discs
Large-capacity hard disks often used by government agencies were found to contain Trojan horse viruses, Investigation Bureau officials warned.
1,800 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.
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FOCUSED ATTACK: Large-capacity hard disks often used by government agencies were found to contain Trojan horse viruses, Investigation Bureau officials warned.
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.
The bureau said that it had instructed the product's Taiwanese distributor, Xander International, to remove the products from shelves immediately.
The bureau said that it first received complaints from consumers last month, saying they had detected Trojan horse viruses on brand new hard discs purchased in Taiwan.
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.
Source: <a href='http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2007/11/11/2003387202' target='_blank'>taipeitimes.com
Another news submission by Zer0Man. Thanks Zer0Man.
Zer0Man
ghost 16 years ago
yeh but watch out if yoy do go looking for info the fbi are definatly watching the site. thanks for the info Zer0Man i have a maxtor but its smaller and older so im safe.
Uber0n 16 years ago
"The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information."
So it's not sure whether the government actually had one of these, only that the government usually uses large HDDs? :right:
NightSpyder 16 years ago
That was a really interesting read. Well worth the minute it took to read it. But I'm glad I didn't buy one of those because I was looking in to that company for HDDs and decided against it due to the price.
ghost 16 years ago
thats really cool…i have never really thought about that before. Putting viruses on a HDD before it gets in a computer….funny funny.
ghost 16 years ago
lol I have a Maxtor Ext HD xD
but yeah, I formatted it like 6 times so it should be good :P