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Asus Ships Cracking Software On Recovery DVD

Posted by timothy on from the cold-sweat-in-taiwan dept.

Barence writes "Asus is accidentally shipping software crackers and confidential documents on the recovery DVDs that come with its laptops. The startling discovery was made by a PC Pro reader whose antivirus software was triggered by a key cracker for the WinRAR compression software, which was located on the recovery DVD for his Asus laptop. Along with the key cracker the disc also contained confidential Asus documents including a PowerPoint presentation that details 'major problems' identified by the company, including application compatibility issues. The UK reader is not alone, either — several users in the US and Australia have also found suspicious files on Asus discs."

4 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Someone Is Getting Fired by petwalrus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suspect perhaps they already were getting fired anyhow and decided to leave behind a 'legacy' they could be remembered for.

  2. Cracking tool? What about the docs? by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A directory containing a large number of confidential Microsoft documents for PC manufacturers, including associated keys and program files

    I would think that this would be of much more interest than some cracking tool one can download. Even the Asus source code should be of more interest as it could be used to improve FLOSS support.

    --
    There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
  3. Goes to show how PERVASIVE piracy is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you can't keep it off your distribution CDs, you just have WAAAAAAY too much of it around.

  4. Re:Someone Is Getting Fired by umrguy76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can blow $150 on lunch when I'm traveling without even needing to get my immediate manager to sign off an approve the reimbursement as long as I don't spend more than $250/day on meals/incidentals/entertainment, but getting reimbursed $29.95 for some shareware app I can't live without requires approval by the vice-president (my boss' boss' boss), who requires our department to submit purchase requests in batches no more than once per quarter.

    Does that $150 lunch reside on your company's network?