Creative Mp3 Players Ship With Virus

[nelimitat 0]

Creative's Japanese arm has apparently shipped several thousand of its Zen Neeon players infected with the Wullik.B worm. The affected players have serial numbers between 230528000001 and 1230533001680.Details of the issue were posted only on the company's Japanese Web site. The problem is localized to the Asia-Pacfic region as the player has not been publicly released elsewhere.Antivirus companies say the risk of a Neeon infecting a user's computer is low, as the worm would have to be physically copied to a hard drive from the player. However, it remains unclear as to how the units were infected with a virus in the first place; Creative has offered no explanation.One possible reason for the virus could be that at some point in production a computer system was infected with the worm. When an image was made to put the operating system onto the Neeon, the virus was likely copied along with it.The worm poses no risk to the player as the Neeon does not run on the Windows operating system itself. No reports of infections have been received as a result of the virus.Security companies also say that when an MP3 player is connected to a system, it is treated as another hard drive. Thus, normal anti-virus programs will detect the virus and prevent infection.

[dontmaimyourself 0]

woops I bet someone got fired for that, I mean you have to go some to release HDD (for the purposes of this anyway) with a virus pre-loaded on to it, ok so maybe it's not a hugh threat as most (good) anti-virus software will catch it, thats if you even get it on your computer. But i suppose acidents happen, ok they don't usually happen like this. but anyway thats at least they came clean about it fairly early in order to limit the damage, to the consumers anyway, their going to have to do something really special to make up for that.

[Dawid 0]

That is a pretty big mistake. Someone definately is in a lot of trouble, imagine the cost involved with recalling all of those MP3 players and refunding and everything.

[littleweseth 0]

Well, I'd say that most consumer computers ship with windows - but i forgot : viruses are *small* and *efficient*.The above is good for one (1) laugh, after which you should dispose it.

[rvalkass 5]

I'm sure things are meant to go through quality control? Wouldn't that have detected the virus? I am sure kost people will just remove it, or let their anti virus do it for them.

[Saint_Michael 3]

$5 that someone working with them put it their, cuz how could no one notice it until after it was shipped hmmm suspicious.

[alicabektas 0]

the best software antivirus Mcaffe 9.0 - Mcaffe Security Center : - Mcaffe Clean - Mcaffe Virus scan - Mcaffe AntiSpaywere The besttt !! Mcaffe

[alperuzi 0]

The best antivirus is common sense, something which apparently Creative engineers lack...

[NiceguyChris 0]

I bet whoever created the worm is laughing so hard right about now...

Edited February 25, 2006 by NiceguyChris (see edit history)

[obscure 0]

well,u don't have to use any anti-virusi never used itand my computer works perfectjust don't enter pron or other suspecious sitesi only used spybootits enough^____^

[JC05 0]

That is really very strange. I worm doesn't just crawl into a Music player. Or does it? Do any of you beleive in UFOs! There HERE! Well, maybe not, still though that is very odd. And i was thining of geting one of creatives music players. I think i'm going to think twice.

[terminal2k 0]

thats not really a big issue, the player isn't actually able to run the virus program so you'd have to be pretty stupid to copy it onto your computer and run it, doubly stupid because being able to do that would mean you have no virus scanner running.

[michaelper22 0]

Someone has to be a real idiot (I like that word) to get a worm/virus on to several hundred thousand MP3 players. I mean, how on earth could that thing get into the firmweare? And why would the computer that the firmware image was compiled on have the worm/virus? There will never be a day where there are no security problems as far as I can predict.