Asus Ships Virus-Laden Eee PCs

Asus has confirmed (Japanese) that models of its Eee Box B202 nettop, which launched in Japan last week, were shipped with a virus on the D partition of the hard drive. The virus file is named "recycled.exe," Asustek said in a statement. When the drive is accessed, the virus copies itself to the C partition of the nettop and to any other removable drives or flash memory cards attached to the PC.

The Eee Box B202 is Asus' first foray into nettops, desktop versions of netbooks such as Asus' highly successful Asus Eee PC.

The company has identified the following models with associated UPC codes as culprits:

• Model number: EEEBOXB202-B; UPC code: 610839761807
• Model number: EEEBOXB202-W; UPC code: 610839761814
• Model number: EBXB202BLK/VW161D; UPC code: 610839530526
• Model number: EBXB202WHT/VW161D-W; UPC code: 610839531202
• Model number: EBXB202BLK/VK191T; UPC code: 610839547753

Symantec claims the virus is most likely the W32/Usbalex worm, which it rates low for damage level. It's a pretty old virus as well, first discovered in Nov. 2006, and as such should be pretty easy to remove.