The writers over at engadget have been following the story of IO Data Device Corporation who have released a portable hard drive complete with a virus.
It seems that their HDP-U Portable Hard Drive, which retails for between about US$110 (for the 40Gig version) up to about US$300 (for the 120Gif version) has a lovely little version of the W32/Tompai-A virus installed and ready to do damage without you having to do anything!
The virus does a few little nasty things that can kind of ruin your day.
While this isn’t the first time that a piece of hardware has been rolled out with a virus included, the lax reaction of the company in dealing with the problem is raising a few eyebrows (ours for instance!).
According to engadget, the company did not even bother to reveal the serial numbers of the infected machines until 14 hours had passed since their announcement of the initial infection. Additionally, to this point IO Data has not offered a fix and are encouraging affected users to download the free trial version of another company’s virus removal software.
It seems a few (ahem.. Sony… ahem) companies of late have decided to give us all a lesson in what NOT to do during a self-inflicted crisis.
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