http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/01/BUV9150IH8.DTL By Deborah Gage Chronicle Staff Writer January 2, 2009 Digital photo frames were one of the best-selling consumer electronics products this holiday season, but some of them carried a nasty surprise - malicious software code that tried to hop onto personal computers when the frames were plugged in. These popular devices are now so powerful that they've become computers in themselves, although people who buy them don't always realize that. And like computers, the frames are capable of carrying code that logs keystrokes, steals data and calls out to other malicious code once it's installed itself on a PC. "Users don't realize that bad guys can make use of each and every computer they can control, even if you don't do Internet banking or have any sensitive information," said Karel Obluk, the chief technology officer of AVG, a security vendor with offices in the United States and Europe. "They can profit by spam or other illegal activities and make (your) PC part of an illegal network. It's something that users should always be reminded of." No one knows how many infected digital photo frames are out there. But the Consumer Electronics Association estimated that 7.4 million such frames were sold in 2008 - up 41 percent from 2007 - and projected that sales would jump again this year by 33 percent to more than 9.8 million frames. Among the frames reported to be infected this holiday season were a Samsung 8-inch frame sold by Amazon.com, an Element 9-inch frame sold by Circuit City and a Mercury 1.5-inch frame sold by Wal-Mart. Amazon.com has e-mailed warnings to its customers about the Samsung frame, but a Circuit City spokesman said the retailer wasn't aware of any infections. After being contacted by The Chronicle, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company would remove the Mercury frames from its Web site. In 2007, Sam's Club - owned by Wal-Mart - also sold infected frames over the holidays, according to customers who bought them, as did Best Buy, Target and Costco. American consumers shopped hard for bargains this year, and digital photo frames have been good deals. Wholesale prices continue to drop - Wal-Mart has been selling the Mercury frame, which comes embedded in a key chain, for $24. But the infected frames also show how risky it is to live with a global supply chain where the cost of buying products at the lowest price means those products can vary widely in quality. [...] _______________________________________________ Please help InfoSecNews.org with a donation! http://www.infosecnews.org/donate.htmlReceived on Mon Jan 05 2009 - 00:00:20 PST
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