Today's odd news: Digital photo frames h4x0r your PC!

Hardware and technical stuff
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If your MMO account gets hacked, it might be because you bought one of those at Best Buy: Engadget report

Ugh, we were already sick of digital photo frames – and now it looks those now-discontinued virus-ridden Insignia units from Best Buy and several other models produced in China were carrying a much nastier trojan that we’d originally heard. According to an analyst form Computer Associates, the trojan, called Mocmex, is able to block more than 100 types of security and anti-virus software from killing it, and bypasses the Windows firewall to download files from remote locations, spreading them randomly over your hard drive and any portable storage device you plug into your PC – like, for example, a digital photo frame. The trojan is apparently set to only steal gaming passwords at present, but CA says it’s capable of stealing nearly any information on your machine, and thinks it might be a test for a much worse virus yet to come. Infected frames have come from Sam’s Club, Target and Costco, in addition to Best Buy, so we’d say to avoid picking one up until this mess gets sorted out – or, you know, forever.

My electric kettle was also looking at me strangely this morning…

Wendelius

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Yeah I bought one of BB ones (it was under the Insignia brand) and received a letter from them explaining that the virus was there. The letter noted that any of the more popular anti-virus software would detect and eliminate the virus. Now, I had returned the digital picture frame without opening it prior to that, so I don’t know if Avast would have found the virus or not.

In other news, PC Mag reported in their January issue (I think January was the issue) that Seagate shipped Maxtor hard drives with a WoW keylogger. It’s fairly clear that there is absolutely zero quality management or care from some of these Chinese factories. I do wonder what year is going to be the consumer revolt, or will the cheap Chinese goods make all forgiveable. I guess we’ll see.

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To nitpick a bit, the subcontractors on the external hard drives were Taiwanese.