Not making this up. In an official statement from Seagate themselves, they admit that there was malicious code released on a certain line of hard drives that actually attempts to steal account information from a select few set of games World of Warcraft being one of them, and sending the data to an actual server in China.
CHECK YOUR RECENT HARD DRIVE PURCHASES!!
Official statement (some links were taken out of this article. If you have one of these hard drives, visit the site and they can provide you with downloads to rid your hardware of malicious code):
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/personal_storage/ps3200-sw
Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200
If you have purchased a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product since August 2007 the product may be infected with a virus. Kaspersky Labs, a maker of anti-virus software, has alerted Seagate to the existence of a virus found on at least one Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product. Seagate has traced this issue to a small number of units produced by a Maxtor sub-contract manufacturer located in China. Seagate quickly put a stop ship to units leaving the facility as soon as the company learned of the probable infection. All units now leaving the facility in question have been cleared of the virus and units in inventory are being reworked before being released for sale. However, some affected units may have been sold to the public before the problem was detected. Seagate apologizes for the inconvenience that has been caused as a result of this incident.
To determine if the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive you have may be infected, or if you have any questions about this virus, please call Seagate customer support. Please have the serial number of your Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive ready when you call. See link at the bottom of this page for a list of Seagate customer support phone numbers.
The effects of this virus are minimal. According to Kaspersky the virus is the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah, a molar virus that searches for passwords to online games and sends them to a server located in China. It also deletes other molar viruses and can disable virus detection software. All of the known games affected are Chinese with the exception of World of Warcraft. The following games are affected.
WSGame
91.com
QQ
Woool
rxjh.17game.com
TianLongBaBu
AskTao
Perfect World (Wanmei Shijie)
World of Warcraft
If your Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 unit is infected or to ensure that your unit is clear from this virus, install the latest virus definition list for your anti-virus software. As of October 2, 2007, 28 of the 32 anti-virus software titles have updated their virus definition list to include detect and clean this virus.
Trojan.Autorun.BK
If you do not have any anti-virus software or if your anti-virus software hasn’t updated its virus definition list, then you can download and install this Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus software application. Kaspersky Lab has provided Seagate customers a free 60-day fully-functional version of its Anti-Virus 7.0 software.
Note: You must uninstall any existing anti-virus software applications before installing this version of Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus software.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Again, once this issue was brought to our attention, we immediately stopped shipment of the product until we could ascertain the issue and provide a fix to our customers.
CHECK YOUR RECENT HARD DRIVE PURCHASES!!
Official statement (some links were taken out of this article. If you have one of these hard drives, visit the site and they can provide you with downloads to rid your hardware of malicious code):
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/personal_storage/ps3200-sw
Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200
If you have purchased a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product since August 2007 the product may be infected with a virus. Kaspersky Labs, a maker of anti-virus software, has alerted Seagate to the existence of a virus found on at least one Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 product. Seagate has traced this issue to a small number of units produced by a Maxtor sub-contract manufacturer located in China. Seagate quickly put a stop ship to units leaving the facility as soon as the company learned of the probable infection. All units now leaving the facility in question have been cleared of the virus and units in inventory are being reworked before being released for sale. However, some affected units may have been sold to the public before the problem was detected. Seagate apologizes for the inconvenience that has been caused as a result of this incident.
To determine if the Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive you have may be infected, or if you have any questions about this virus, please call Seagate customer support. Please have the serial number of your Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drive ready when you call. See link at the bottom of this page for a list of Seagate customer support phone numbers.
The effects of this virus are minimal. According to Kaspersky the virus is the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah, a molar virus that searches for passwords to online games and sends them to a server located in China. It also deletes other molar viruses and can disable virus detection software. All of the known games affected are Chinese with the exception of World of Warcraft. The following games are affected.
WSGame
91.com
Woool
rxjh.17game.com
TianLongBaBu
AskTao
Perfect World (Wanmei Shijie)
World of Warcraft
If your Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 unit is infected or to ensure that your unit is clear from this virus, install the latest virus definition list for your anti-virus software. As of October 2, 2007, 28 of the 32 anti-virus software titles have updated their virus definition list to include detect and clean this virus.
Trojan.Autorun.BK
If you do not have any anti-virus software or if your anti-virus software hasn’t updated its virus definition list, then you can download and install this Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus software application. Kaspersky Lab has provided Seagate customers a free 60-day fully-functional version of its Anti-Virus 7.0 software.
Note: You must uninstall any existing anti-virus software applications before installing this version of Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus software.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Again, once this issue was brought to our attention, we immediately stopped shipment of the product until we could ascertain the issue and provide a fix to our customers.