You would never want to know that your USB drive malware because if you did find that out you’ll probably throw it out the window. You’d never expect a company as accomplished as IBM to ship out USB drives that are infected with malware, but that’s precisely what it did, albeit accidentally. IBM has acknowledged in a support advisory post that some of its USB drives contain malware.
The IBM USB drives that include malicious code have an initialization tool for some of its Storwize systems. Customers can figure out whether they have one of those drives by checking the part number.
“When the initialization tool is launched from the USB flash drive, the tool copies itself to a temporary folder on the hard drive of the desktop or laptop during normal operation,” IBM explains.
Those who have a USB flash drive from IBM that contains part number 01AC585 should either destroy the drive so that it can’t be used again or follow the steps mentioned by IBM in the post to repair the drive.
The post further mentions that if the serial number on a Storwize system begins with characters 78D2 then there’s nothing to worry about as it’s not affected by this issue.
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