Generally the latest hard drive news is about the ever increasing capacity as well as the improvements in solid state flash based hard drives and other potential magnetic hard disk killers. This time, Seagate has announced a warning that a small batch of its 500GB Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 external hard drives are infected with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah virus. They blame an unnamed Chinese subcontractor for the problem.
According to a report they got from Kaspersky, this molar virus is a password stealer which scans the system for passwords to certain online games and sends them to a server in China. It can also disable antivirus software and disable other molar viruses. While it primarily targets Chinese-language game titles, Seagate has reported that it appears that the only English-language title affected is World of Warcraft. Going by a PC World report, up to 1,800 drives are affected.
Customers who have purchased a 500GB Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 since August 2007 are advised to scan the drive with antivirus software with the latest virus definitions.
Further info can be read in this DailyTech report and on this official Seagate support article.
