Gaming World Forums
General Category => General Talk => Topic started by: Madolah on November 22, 2007, 12:24:23 am
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http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/virus-lockdown/seagate-fingers-hard+drive-poisoning-employee-hardens-prevention-measures-full-story-323994.php
Seen this on CNN just now but couldn't find the CNN article so i found the next best.
It seems Seagate Hard disc Drives made in China and shipped out where pre installed with a Trojan horse virus. the security flaw has been fixed and all HDDs are now cleared but if you bought one recently go get it checked to be safe.
This also apparently happened with the Itouches made in China with not only a trojan virus but a folder that was un-deletable that was an ad-ware.
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Is there some sort of underground movement to fuck up all exports from China? Every week there is a new story...
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I don't think I have to worry about this though. My anti virus should catch it should my latest seagate drive (external) have it.
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Hooray for 5-year old computers.
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I think it was someone tired of slave work who did this as a form of revenge.
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I think it was someone tired of slave work who did this as a form of revenge.
What an interesting theory.
More likely, some worker was paid off by a rival company.
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I suspect Western Digital
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It was only on Maxtor Basic 3200 or some shit according to that article. I've never even heard of that unit, so I doubt it affects anyone in North America. Sounds like most of the units ended up in China/Taiwan or Russia and the Middle East. Still, it made them tighten their quality assurance which is never a bad thing!
Also, the trojan was a keylogger targeted at gaming passwords. Sounds like someone is trying to hijack WoW accounts!!
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Ive never even heard of seagate. But yeah, good thing my China-made American flag keychains cant get viruses
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Wait, how could this even work? Are these drives preformatted and the virus comes from an autorun file? Is it in the MBR? Either way I can't see how this would affect most people unless it was used as a secondary drive, because if it were used as the primary OS drive, the virus would almost immediately be overwritten by the OS installer.
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Wait, how could this even work? Are these drives preformatted and the virus comes from an autorun file? Is it in the MBR? Either way I can't see how this would affect most people unless it was used as a secondary drive, because if it were used as the primary OS drive, the virus would almost immediately be overwritten by the OS installer.
pretty sure there was a small hidden partition containing the virus
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I think it was someone tired of slave work who did this as a form of revenge.
it is no longer the 19th century
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I used to be pretty cool with this chinese guy a while back and I needed to backup some things on floppies because I didn't have a CD drive, so he gave me a new case of these 3.5" floppy disks from China. Pretty much all of them had the ANTI-CMOS virus--even though they appeared to be blank.
It was a pain in the ass to say the least, and I can't say I'm surprised to hear this.
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I suspect Western Digital
This is why I bought a WD drive; they are more clever then their competition!
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it is no longer the 19th century
Yeah but its China
Edit: CHINA
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Yeah but its China
Edit: CHINA
I don't know why, but he brings up a good point...
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I don't know why, but he brings up a good point...
Is it because you are racist imbeciles?
China is a country of billions run by a federal government that had done a superb job of curtailing corruption in a region historically know for its ever present corruption. One of the primary concerns with the poor state of labour laws in China is that much of the money that is creating the awful working conditions is coming from the US: a problem that many countries have faced over the years.
Admittedly much of China still remains in a rural, poor economic bracket where the law is incredibly hard to administer, but for the most part the government has done a much better job than people give it credit for. I am not saying they don't censor everything out the ass and arrest and kill their own people for "political" reasons, but considering the state of China as recently as sixty years ago you cannot help but respect them. Unless you're a racist know-nothing, of course.
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Actually, I suspect it's miscommunication. China have over 30 dialects and at the rate of their exporting power, lil' village workers from the outpost don't have time to learn city-Mandrin. So when the boss said, "Give those hard drives a proper pre-install," his managers must have heard, "Screw those hard drives accidentally," and the working minions must have heard "Fuck those American hard drives."
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More like:
Boss: "bing bong ching chong"
Manager: "ching chang bing bang"
Worker: "long bong bangarang"
amirite because China is backwards and it's CHINA right guys right?
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Is it because you are racist imbeciles?
No its because you friggin whine to much. Geeze. Just be thankful your computer doesnt have a virus[or ][/or]
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Is it because you are racist imbeciles?
It's not racism, it just seems that China likes to manufacture lower-quality everything using (almost) slave work while it might be "good" because it's cheaper to manufacture things there and maybe it's also "good" for their economy I don't think the workers actually like that way of life (working 28 hours a day and being paid 0.01$ per hour)
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More like:
Boss: "bing bong ching chong"
Manager: "ching chang bing bang"
Worker: "long bong bangarang"
amirite because China is backwards and it's CHINA right guys right?
I think you're reading into this way too much.
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Shame I didn't read this before buying a Seagate HDD today!
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I've had no problems with my Seagate drive I got last year, in fact, it's one of the best drives I've ever owned.
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More like:
Boss: "bing bong ching chong"
Manager: "ching chang bing bang"
Worker: "long bong bangarang"
amirite because China is backwards and it's CHINA right guys right?
man i think they might just be going on the popular image that china is a pretty mean fucking place
you know, the country with an active government that bans a hell of a lot of things? most of the internet is inaccessable by default, they ban any films that even MENTION china and they even ban the actors that work in them!
so yeah it isn't too farfetched to believe china is still a very supressed place to live
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pretty sure there was a small hidden partition containing the virus
a hidden partition containing a virus contains absolutely no threat to the computer, unless there was something in the MBR to specifically run it. and the MBR will never be run unless it's your primary drive, in which case you would have formatted it anyway
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you can't even get brand new hardware without some corporate virus or ad-ware PRE-INSTALLED on it nowadays?? it's bad enough that companies are already barraging people with their mal-ware shit at every corner of the internet.
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They aren't talking about China being a "mean place to live" they are talking about the Chinese using slave labour (there is a huge difference between low wages and slave labour, it is not just a matter of pay) like they are fucking animals or something, and when questioned about it his defence is "YEAH BUT CHINA" like that explains it.
I admit my last post was pretty stupid and I kind of expected to get warned for it (where are lazy mod's??!!?!) but it is just a gut reaction to over saturation by the media (China is bad because of socialism) and I'm not OK with that (I am not a media conspiracy nut or anything but China gets a pretty raw deal)!
I am curious whether or not, if these drives came from some manufacturer stateside, people would just blame Americans (or maybe it was the Mexicans!) or something. Just because one company (or one individual factory) has poor standard operating procedures does not mean anyone should indite the Chinese people (or government or any combination of the two) as a whole. I am aware that there have been more than one instances of this, but while there exists in China a completely alien market structure that may sometimes facilitate negligence, that doesn't mean it promotes it.
Plus I really don't like Pepoke and his person offends me.