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iPods Come Complete With Windows Virus
kaufmanmoore writes "Cnet is reporting that some video Ipods made after September 12th have the RavMonE virus loaded onto it. In Apple's announcement they take a swipe at Windows security and encourage Windows users to install anti virus applications."
"it was traced to a particular Windows machine in the manufacturing lines of a contract manufacturer " and "Very few units actually went through that particular station"
Why is a Windows machine ever connected to an iPod during manufacturing? I'd think for a high volume product like the iPod, there would be dedicated disk duplicators to format/populate the drives, and testing would likewise be done with purpose-designed hardware. Using a Windows PC to do either seems like a crude, inefficient way to do things.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
What I find interesting is the potential for this type of distribution to be the vector for a zero-day exploit.
Imagine the scenario: an unscrupulous individual happens across an unannounced vulnerability, and develops an exploit. Rather than building it into a worm/botnet replication mechanism, he finds a way to load it onto a consumer electronics device (mp3 player, flash drive, camera, etc) and lets the well-established merchandise distribution network take it from there. Weeks/months later, at a predetermined time, an attack can be launched simultaneously from hundreds/thousands of locations, and we have a nasty problem on our hands.
An object at rest cannot be stopped!
I agree with you, although... I have to wonder, how did it get on the iPod in the first place? If you look at the W32/Rjump worm you can see that it spreads itself by copying itself to mounted removeable storage drives.
Perhaps someone tested a prototype on an infected windows machine, to make sure some minor manufacturing change didn't bork the device. Then after working on it a bit they got it to work, copied the image over, and all of a sudden you have iPods being pumped out of the factor with a virus on them. Clearly just a guess, but if something similar to that happened and I was Apple I'd sure as hell be pissed that Windows lack of security caused my hardware devices to get factory shipped with a virus on them.
Note that this scenario is supported by TFA: "Joswiak said it was traced to a particular Windows machine in the manufacturing lines of a contract manufacturer that builds the iPods for Apple."
In that context, Apple has every right to be irritated. Either way though you're right, it's a pretty stupid PR move to make a comment like that. They should just apologize, fix the problem, and move on.
Do they? Last I heard there was a "proof of concept," but IIRC even it required user interaction to propagate. I've never heard of a real, self-propagating, OS X virus in the wild.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz