Last month Asus hit the tech headlines when it was found out that the recovery DVD that they were shipping out contained a cracking tool, some confidential Microsoft documents and Asus application source code. Well according to the folks at Geek.com it appears that Asus hasn’t learn any quality control lessons from that experience. It seems that a number of the their Eee Box models have been shipped with a virus hitching a ride on the hard drive.
The unwanted addition to the factory fresh computer is from the W32/Usbalex family which is triggered by a file called recycle.exe that sits on the D: drive. the moment you access the D: drive on an infected machine this recycle.exe is launched which then tries to infect the main C: drive. Additionally another worm called W32.Gammima.AG has been found on some machines.
The following models are believed to be the bearer of this wormy goodness
Model: EEEBOXB202-B UPC: 610839761807
Model: EEEBOXB202-W UPC: 610839761814
Model: EBXB202BLK/VW161D UPC: 610839530526
Model: EBXB202WHT/VW161D-W UPC: 610839531202
Model: EBXB202BLK/VK191T UPC: 610839547753
Now Asus has confirmed that some machines have been shipped that contain these additional goodies and in the press release about this incident (translated from Japanese) they have apologized for this happening. Granted apologies are good and they are doing what they can via their support site but come on guys two incidents like this is just unacceptable. I think Asus is going to have to do some serious work on their quality control but even still this isn’t going to be very helpful to their brand name.
