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Ooops... hard drive maker ships trojan on storage media

Oooops... According to the Sunbelt blog a Japanese storage maker (I-O Data Device) has offered to exchange drives that were discovered to have been shipped out with the Tompai-A, a worm which would g…

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Avery J. Parker

IT veteran, maker educator, and author of Network Ninja, 3D Printing Mastery, and AI Workflow Mastery. Business IT: Diversified Tech Solutions.

Oooops... According to the Sunbelt blog a Japanese storage maker (I-O Data Device) has offered to exchange drives that were discovered to have been shipped out with the Tompai-A, a worm which would give a cracker backdoor access to a machine. It affects portable hard drive's in the companies HDP-U series.


I'm often asked how an average person is supposed to defend themselves against such stuff.... really sometimes I wonder. I usually tell people to make sure their antivirus is up-to-date, use a firewall and keep at least one anti-spyware application running if they must stick with Windows. Install alternative browsers, cut off auto-preview of emails/etc... But like I say, sometimes I just wonder how an average user is supposed to be able to keep up if even the hardware makers slip up and send out a trojan to their customers (or a music company.... intentionally).

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