HP ships infected USB keys

Autorun worms found on batch of server setup devices.

A batch of USB thumb drives containing software intended to assist in the setup of servers have been found to contain some nasty extras, in the shape of worms using the autorun feature to infect systems connected to the removable devices. The drives were shipped to Australian customers of hardware and software giant

HP

along with the

Proliant

server range.

The USB drives provided software used in the setup of floppy drives on the servers, but also risked infecting unwary users with the W32/SillyFDC and W32/Fakerecy worms, according to an alert issued by AusCERT. Commentators have suggested that the risk of infection may be minimal, thanks to limited requirements for floppy drives in modern servers, but recycling of such devices is common and the incident also indicates further serious security gaps in production processes regarding removable hardware, after numerous similar problems in recent months involving

hard drives

,

MP3 players

, digital photo frames and other devices.

‘This is a worrying security lapse, especially as it comes from a major global brand with huge resources,’ said

John Hawes

, Technical Consultant at

Virus Bulletin

. ‘Production and release procedures at all serious companies should be locked down tight to prevent this kind of thing – if we can’t trust the big boys to keep their systems clean, who can we trust?’

A recent report from

ESET

highlighted the growth in the use of the autorun feature for malware spreading, with autorun-related .INF files topping their malware prevalence charts for March by some distance – the report (in PDF format) is

here

. The AusCERT alert on the

HP

USB key incident can be found

here

, with more commentary and debate at

The Register


here

.

All

Windows

users are advised to disable the default autorun settings if possible – step-by-step instructions can be found at

about.com


here

.

Posted on 9 April 2008 by

Virus Bulletin