HP Australia has warned that optional USB keys shipped with some of its Proliant servers are infected with malware, bringing attention to the growing use of USB drives as a means to distribute viral infections.

The low risk worms, Fakerecy and SillyFDC, were found in a batch of 256MB and 1GB USB keys that shipped with the servers. It is undetermined how many infected keys, used for installing optional floppy-disc drives to servers, were distributed. An infected machine in the manufacturing factory is the likely cause of the incident.

The malware distributed is not considered an enormous threat, due in part to the low number of estimated users still utilizing floppy disk drives for data storage and that most hackers don’t find the virus valuable.

This is not the first incident of infection to come out of the factory; others have involved digital photo frames and similar products. Anti-virus software, if up to date, should detect both of the viruses involved in the Proliant USB attack as long the computer security software was installed after the floppy disk was added. Disabling autorun thwarts both Fakerecy and SillyFDC and may be the better option.

HP’s advisory, via local security clearing house AUSCert, can be found here. The SANS Institutes’s Internet Storm Centre has advice on avoiding USB malware-related peril here.

Tags: HP, In the wild, infected, Information Security, Malware, USB, worm

Author: Christopher