Virus found on new hard drives...

[mjc]

Cue 007 theme song...

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTP20376020071112

[PrntRhd]

Maybe they were these HDDs from Thailand:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/11/2246246

[Paleo Pete]

China and Taiwan regularly trade accusations of spying and last month Germany accused China of being behind Internet espionage attacks on its companies and government.

So let me get this straight...Government and/or corporate greed halfway around the world is getting so bad they are using malware to retrieve home users' information. And I didn't see a word in either article about what happened to any data they might have obtained by this trojan before it was discovered. Has it been deleted? Are 1800 bank account or credit card numbers still sitting in a Chinese database somewhere? Is 1800 an accurate estimate, or did someone miss a zero?

"All products leaving the factory are now cleared of the virus," said the company in an emailed statement.

Can we believe this? Or did this give Seagate an idea? Sony certainly had no qualms about embedding highly questionable software in a game even after being caught red handed putting rootkits on music CDs...

What does this say about the state of governments in general? The US government has had software available and in use for several years that lets FBI, CIA etc virtually do anything they want with any computer in the country...or the world for that matter. Fortunately it's not being installed on hard drives right out of the factory...or is it??? Our government wouldn't do anything like that. Would they???

Nah...we have responsible, honest people just oozing integrity running our government - like Richard Nixon...Bill Clinton...George W Bush...

And home users ask me why security is such an issue...Awww I ain't got nuttin' nobody wants on my computer...Somebody in the CIA is probably digging through my files right now just because I typed Nixon's and Bush's names in the same post as the word espionage...

Corporations have way too much power and governments are overrun with greed and corruption, and not only in the US. What other governments around the world are trying to figure out ways to use computers to spy on everyone possible? Or am I just paranoid? I know I'm disgusted.

[SufferWell1396]

Paleo Pete, i think thats a lil paranoid there.
theyd be breaking their own laws if they did that,
thats like, fighting yourself for something youre against....

like Richard Nixon
and im against you there
Nixon wasnt the first to do it
He was just The First To Get Caught.
overall Nixon was a good president, his foreign policy was great.

now, theres alot more i could challenge there, like George W. but im not going to, political arguments are pointless in my oppinion.
its like fighting over music
its all personal oppinion...

[mjc]

Paleo Pete, i think thats a lil paranoid there.
theyd be breaking their own laws if they did that,
thats like, fighting yourself for something youre against....


Umm...that wouldn't be the firs time...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071106-judge-forces-telcos-to-retain-data-in-nsa-spy-case.html

[Paleo Pete]

Didn't mean to open up a political slamfest, that's what they usually turn into. And no, Nixon wasn't the first, or the worst, just the one that comes to mind first.

[classicsoftware]

Paleo Pete, i think thats a lil paranoid there.
theyd be breaking their own laws if they did that,
thats like, fighting yourself for something youre against....


and im against you there
Nixon wasnt the first to do it
He was just The First To Get Caught.
overall Nixon was a good president, his foreign policy was great.

now, theres alot more i could challenge there, like George W. but im not going to, political arguments are pointless in my oppinion.
its like fighting over music
its all personal oppinion...

Nixon did a lot of good things. But he almost destroyed the constitution and for that history will treat him harshly. What he did and the way he did it far surpassed anything any president had done before him. George W Bush will be treated harshly for the same reason. They attempted to destroy the balance of power by emasculating other branches of government. Both RMN and GWB accumulated way too much power in the executive branch of government.

[tommy]

[QUOTE=classicsoftware;371942]Both RMN and GWB accumulated way too much power in the executive branch of government.[/QUOTE

Re GWB -- Might it have been a case that someone had to do something because of a do nothing congress?

[bassman]

someone had to do something
Don't let someone telling you this make you believe they justified their actions. Just because he said HE needed to, does not actually mean it needed to be done. ;)
If I were your gardener and I found a dandelion in your lawn and I came to you saying "OH MY GOD, YOU MUST LET ME DIG UP YOUR ENTIRE LAWN SO I CAN REMOVE THAT DANDELION BEFORE IT DESTROYS YOUR ENTIRE LAWN!!!", would you let me?

[PrntRhd]

I don't know how we got from HDDs with possible trojans to Nixon! and GW Bush.
:confused:
There have been instances where embarrassing things occur such as when IBM sent out a couple of hundred Funlove infected PCs, and certainly there have been a few large software companies who had sent infected CD-ROMS only to have to try to retrieve them later.
Hardware component mfgs also have incidents but they are rare. It will be interesting to see what the forensics turn up in this case of bad HDDs.

[mjc]

If anything, this should serve to vindicate those who, as a matter of course, wipe and format brand new drives when installing them...

[Fruss Tray Ted]

You mean as an 'indication of vindication'?

Seems this to be a perfectly good time for me to start doing so.