TomTom GO 910 infested with viruses!
Marc Brett
Ref: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1276.html
It started with an email from a worried satnav user, an IT consultant who knows
his way around a computer and knows a virus when his AV software flags one up.
The cause for his concern being a newly purchased TomTom GO 910 satnav unit
that, once connected to his PC, immediately caused an anti-virus software alert.
Not one, but two alerts in fact. The win32.Perlovga.A Trojan and
TR/Drop.Small.qp were identified as being resident on the satnav hard drive,
within the copy.exe and host.exe files.
That’s worth repeating, two Trojans resident on the hard drive of a brand new,
straight from the shop, satnav unit.
Ian Rawlings
> That’s worth repeating, two Trojans resident on the hard drive of a brand new,
> straight from the shop, satnav unit.
If they're really there, they can't affect the tomtom unit as it runs
linux, and they can't affect the windows box they're connected to
unless they get executed by the windows box with user intervention, so
the world's not about to end.
--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
Marc Brett
>If they're really there, they can't affect the tomtom unit as it runs
>linux, and they can't affect the windows box they're connected to
>unless they get executed by the windows box with user intervention, so
>the world's not about to end.
Ahh, but what kind of user intervention?
"It will infect your computer instantly when you run the TomTom HOME software."
Great. So a conscientious user who tries to upgrade the firmware or back up the
hard drive is going to infect his PC.
Detecting and disinfecting the viruses is not obvious for the casual user --
just deleting the files doesn't work. TomTom has known about the problem for
over a month and hasn't bothered to post a solution on its web site. What kind
of support is that?
Ian Rawlings
> Great. So a conscientious user who tries to upgrade the firmware or back up the
> hard drive is going to infect his PC.
Virus warnings from antivirus software occur when the back up is made
because the files are checked when they are copied in, so if you get a
virus warning about it being in your backup, it doesn't mean that
you've been infected.
What apparently is an issue is if you have autorun enabled, just one
of the nice "making life easier" features that Microsoft like to put
into their products. I've always turned it off so don't know how it
behaves with something like a tomtom GPS.
> What kind of support is that?
Tomtom support...
Peter Crosland
> On 2007-01-29, Marc Brett <use...@fordson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> That's worth repeating, two Trojans resident on the hard drive of a
>> brand new, straight from the shop, satnav unit.
>
> If they're really there, they can't affect the tomtom unit as it runs
> linux, and they can't affect the windows box they're connected to
> unless they get executed by the windows box with user intervention, so
> the world's not about to end.
Whilst virus affecting Linux are at present rare they do exist.
Peter Crosland
Tumbleweed
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--
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Ian Rawlings
> Whilst virus affecting Linux are at present rare they do exist.
I know but they're pathetic. A windows virus can't affect linux
directly, short of being emulated under Wine, and I've never heard of
that so far. A windows virus could of course delete files used by a
windows box if the windows box has a share or drive open that contains
those files e.g. deleting the contents of the tomtom 910 mounted as a
drive, but that's stretching it a little too much, and way out of
context in this particular situation. The tomtom 910 can't run
windows viruses directly itself.
Ian Rawlings
> A windows virus could of course delete files used by a
> windows box if the windows box has a share or drive open that contains
> those files
Ooops, I meant a windows virus could delete files used by a linux box..
Tim Downie
"Marc Brett" <use...@fordson.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1ubrr2lanpsl7bu3n...@4ax.com...
Hmmm... strange, but apparently true.
http://www.tomtom.com/news/category.php?ID=2&NID=349&Language=1
Tim
>