Taiwan - Large-capacity hard disks often used by government agencies were found to contain Trojan horse viruses, Investigation Bureau officials warned.
Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.
Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.
The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner's knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said.
The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics 500G discs.
The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved.
Anyone who has purchased this kind of hard disc should return it to the place of purchase, the bureau said.
It said it had pulled 1,500 discs from shelves, while the remaining 300 had been sold by the stores to consumers. (more)
