- Mar 22, 2011
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According to THIS Guardian article, brand new computers in China are shipping already loaded with malware, and in some cases vicious malware. Nitol in particular taps into a botnet and begins to spread its poison across the Net in the background, and it replicates itself every time a USB stick is attached to the new computer.
There's no evidence yet that these machines are making it to the US, but it's only a matter of time. It pays to do a thorough scan right out of the box, before you hook your machine up to a LAN. And it's preferable to do the scan offline - that is, with a bootable CD or USB stick with an anti-malware program on it, before Windows, Mac or Linux ever sees the light of day on your new machine.
There's no evidence yet that these machines are making it to the US, but it's only a matter of time. It pays to do a thorough scan right out of the box, before you hook your machine up to a LAN. And it's preferable to do the scan offline - that is, with a bootable CD or USB stick with an anti-malware program on it, before Windows, Mac or Linux ever sees the light of day on your new machine.