Virus Warning!

[Harry]

I'm just passing this along some information, that I may have even gotten from the Camel.

Virus's are being pre-loaded into electronic gear that you can plug into your computer via usb or firewire. This includes cameras, flash drives, digital picture frames. . . anything that you can connect to your computer. It is suggested that you run a virus scan on all of these devices prior to using them.

[JDArt]

Did you get a virus this way?

[filo_beddo]

I work in IT and would find this dubious. (Along with virus's the other thing that commonly gets spread around the net are hoaxes ... ever get an email saying 'forward this to all your freinds so this bad thing does'nt happen to them? ).

What is the source of your information? an email?
If so take the subject of the email and do a search on one of the popular AV providers sites (sophos, kaspersky, mcafee etc). They also list popular hoaxes along with exploits/virus's.

For the threat your warning of to exist it would be virus's added to kit by a middle man (the shopkeeper?) as its highly unlikey to happen in the factory as all these type of devices will be programmed via imaging processes (cloning).

Legit or not, the most popular delivery method these days is from external media. The best defense (other than good up-to date AV) is to have the autorun feature (windows) disabled (google for how to). Its not as convenient but strengthens you against attack.