ASUS ships malware with Eee Box systems in Japan

Egan Orion over at the INQ is reporting that ASUS shipped 4,500 Eee Box systems into Japan with a malware virus called "recycled.exe". According to ASUS, only systems sold in Japan are affected.


The virus is located on the D drive partition and once the user first starts up the system, it will copy itself to the master boot drive and any attached drives. The malware will slow down the users Eee Box and attempt to download more dangerous bits and bytes from the Internet.

According to ASUS rep Yusheng Li, only 300 units have been sold so far. Those 300 units have since been recalled.

Note to ASUS: Don't you think it's time you started checking your Ghost images for viruses before shipping your product? This isn't the first time this type of thing has happened, remember?