Topic: Olympus ships cameras infected with worm

[Samker]

Olympus has confirmed that some of its Stylus Tough 6010 digital compact cameras have been shipping with a worm installed.

The malware is not on the camera's firmware but is instead contained on the microSD card it is shipped with. Once the card is inserted into a Windows computer via a USB port the worm spreads if the autorun feature is turned on or if the application is accessed.

In a statement Olympus said it humbly apologised for the error and it has set up a site for users to check the serial number of their cameras against the malware infected list: http://www.olympus.co.jp/jp/support/cs/info/if20100608.cfm
The site is in Japanese but can be viewed using Chrome's free Translate application: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb

The Stylus Tough 6100 is a ruggedised camera built to withstand water, dust and drop damage. Olympus estimate that nearly 2,000 phones have been shipped with the worm.

This is the latest of a series of problems with manufacturers shipping products with malware built in. Analysts have warned that companies may face increasing legal liability if standards are not tightened.

“With such a long history of incidents like this, more companies need to wake up to the need for better quality control to ensure that they don't ship virus-infected gadgets,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“At the same time, consumers should learn to always ensure Autorun is disabled, and scan any device for malware, before they use it on their computer.”

(V3)

[luffy]

Last time malware in IBM USB. Now worm is in Olympus cameras? WTF is wrong with the world today?

[Delsol]

Compaq and HP among other PC makers used to ship restore CD discs contaminated with viruses. As far as I could remember there was a guy at a Smartphone manufactures' factory plant who visited some porn sites at work and got the whole batch of devices' USB storage infected. Nowadays, there are strict measures at the factory site to prevent this type of stuff from happening - like internal LAN completely cut off from the Internet. However, workers\engineers can't help bringing in their personal flash memory drives from time to time...