EckerNet.Com

Well you may already be infected with malware. No it\’s not because you were surfing the wrong type of sites, or downloading the wrong type of porn (is there a wrong type?). Reports are that some Maxtor harddrives come from the manufacturer preloaded with trojan viruses.

About 1,800 brand new 300-GB or 500-GB external hard drives made for Maxtor in Thailand were found to have trojan horse malwares pre-installed (autorun.inf and ghost.pif). When the HD is in use, these forward information on the disk to two websites in Beijing, China: www.nice8.org or www.we168.org. The article implies that authorities believe the Chinese government is behind the trojans. A later article pins down the point of infection to a subcontractor company in China. A couple of months back the Register was reporting on pre-installed malware detected on Maxtor disks sold in the Netherlands. This earlier report was downplayed by a Seagate spokesman.

Lead in paint. Date-rape drugs in kids toys. Poison in dog food. Viruses on hard drives. The list goes on…

So now the question becomes….what CAN\’T China screw up??