Friday, January 11, 2008
Virus Embedded in Pucture Frames
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "Digital Home Software" @ 02:30 PM
"Back on Christmas Day we published a diary about digital picture frames being purchased with malware installed on the built-in memory. Last Friday we did a follow-up diary after two more readers wrote to tell us that they also purchased malware-infected photo frames. In the second diary we asked readers to check any recently purchased devices that connect to a user's computer via a USB cable and appear to the operating system as a mounted drive. In years past this would have been limited to iPods and USB memory sticks but now it includes digital photo frames, GPS devices, external hard drives, and of course digital cameras."
So interesting that I read this article now because after years of this genre of products being around, this Christmas I got a digital picture frame. Of course, after reading this article, the first thing I did is to take it out of its box, set it up and follow the instructions in the linked article to see if my computer was going to be at risk at all. It is interesting though that I have never seen or heard of getting malware on their machines via this method (or iPods, USB sticks, etc.) -- knock on wood. ;-) Have you?