Security news24 January 2008
Best Buy digital photo frames ship with computer virus Holiday purchasers at risk of malware infection
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have reminded users of the importance of computer security following the disclosure that digital photo frames sold in the holiday season carried a virus.
Insignia NS-DPF10A digital photo frames, which connect to PCs via USB, were "contaminated with a computer virus during the manufacturing process" according to a notice posted on the company's website.
Insignia published information about the infected products on its website.
Retail giant Best Buy is the exclusive vendor of Insignia products, and has said it is trying to contact customers who have purchased the 10.4 inch picture frames.
"The good news is that the virus which has made its way onto some of the digital photo frames has been around for some years, and just about every anti-virus product should have no difficulties in intercepting the infection," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "From that point of view, Best Buy is lucky, and things could have been a lot worse. Their challenge now is getting a message to the many people who may have purchased the frames in the run-up to the holidays and may not have the right protection in place. Technology producers need to not lose sight of data security, and be careful that malware doesn't creep onto their devices at manufacture."
Other consumer gadgets to have been affected by virus infections in the past include the TomTom satellite navigation device and Apple Video iPods. In 2006, the Japanese subsidiary of McDonald's recalled 10,000 MP3 players after discovering that they had been infected by a spyware Trojan horse.
Sophos experts note that the virus infection on the digital photo frame only affects Windows computers, not devices running Mac OS X or Linux.
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More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.
