{"id":4993,"date":"2008-03-21T13:11:30","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T13:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html"},"modified":"2008-03-21T13:11:30","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T13:11:30","slug":"computer-viruses-spreading-thr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html","title":{"rendered":"Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2008\/TECH\/ptech\/03\/13\/factory.installed.virus.ap\/index.html\">Mostly from China<\/a>. I&#8217;m not quite convinced that the Chinese government isn&#8217;t involved.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>From iPods to navigation systems, some of today&#8217;s hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nRecent cases reviewed by The Associated Press include some of the most widely used tech devices: Apple iPods, digital picture frames sold by Target and Best Buy stores, and TomTom navigation gear.<br \/>\nIn most cases, Chinese factories &#8212; where many companies have turned to keep prices low &#8212; are the source.<br \/>\nSo far, the virus problem appears to come from lax quality control, perhaps a careless worker plugging an infected music player into a factory computer used for testing, rather than organized sabotage by hackers or the Chinese factories.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nJerry Askew, a Los Angeles computer consultant, bought a Uniek digital picture frame to surprise his 81-year-old mother for her birthday. But when he added family photos, it tried to unload a few surprises of its own.<br \/>\nWhen he plugged the frame into his Windows PC, his antivirus program alerted him to a threat. The $50 frame, built in China and bought at Target, was infected with four viruses, including one that steals passwords.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nSecurity experts say the malicious software is apparently being loaded at the final stage of production, when gadgets are pulled from the assembly line and plugged in to a computer to make sure everything works.<br \/>\nIf the testing computer is infected &#8212; say, by a worker who used it to charge his own infected iPod &#8212; the digital germ can spread to anything else that gets plugged in.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nIn one case, digital frames sold at Sam&#8217;s Club contained a previously unknown bug that not only steals online gaming passwords but disables antivirus software, according to security researchers at CA Inc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mostly from China. I&#8217;m not quite convinced that the Chinese government isn&#8217;t involved. From iPods to navigation systems, some of today&#8217;s hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam. [&#8230;] Recent cases reviewed by The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets - Reformed Chicks Blabbing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets - Reformed Chicks Blabbing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mostly from China. I&#8217;m not quite convinced that the Chinese government isn&#8217;t involved. From iPods to navigation systems, some of today&#8217;s hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam. [&#8230;] Recent cases reviewed by The&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Reformed Chicks Blabbing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-21T13:11:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Susan Johnson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","og_description":"Mostly from China. I&#8217;m not quite convinced that the Chinese government isn&#8217;t involved. From iPods to navigation systems, some of today&#8217;s hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam. [&#8230;] Recent cases reviewed by The&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html","og_site_name":"Reformed Chicks Blabbing","article_published_time":"2008-03-21T13:11:30+00:00","author":"Susan Johnson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html","name":"Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-21T13:11:30+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-21T13:11:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/b4e41455e911277a4681a65e81271065"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/computer-viruses-spreading-thr.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Computer viruses spreading through electronic gadgets"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/","name":"Reformed Chicks Blabbing","description":"Politics and current events from a Reformed perspective, by Michele McGinty","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/b4e41455e911277a4681a65e81271065","name":"Susan Johnson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/020\/02041661cf28a19369e083191c05c819x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/020\/02041661cf28a19369e083191c05c819x96.jpg","caption":"Susan Johnson"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/author\/sjohnson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}