Wow, talk about your bonehead play of the day. It turns out that a batch of laptops from a firm called Medion were shipped with Vista preloaded. And, a nasty little friend. Well, it was nasty(ish) 13 years ago. The systems were infected with the Stoned.Angelina boot sector virus. Now, having once been an aficionado of early virus files I in fact have a version of this on disk somewhere in my basement. Just to put things in perspective it is stored on a 5.25″ floppy disk.
From the Register UK:
The computers had been loaded with Microsoft’s latest operating system Vista and Bullguard’s anti-virus software, which failed to detect and remove the malware.
Although the infection itself is harmless, Stoned.Angelina will undoubtedly have left Microsoft and Bullguard execs blushing with embarrassment about the apparent flaws in their software which allowed an ancient virus to slip through the back door.
On its website Bullguard offered some reassurance to Medion customers hit by the virus:
“Stoned.Angelina is a low-risk boot virus that infects the MBR (Master Boot Record) of hard disks. This is a very old virus. Apart from its ability to spread from computer to computer, it carries no payload (damage) to the systems it infects.”
It added that the virus commonly spreads by being booted from an infected floppy disk, and causes no damage to the operating system.
Well, the virus may be harmless. Not really the point though. This is an mild embarrassment for Bullguard who, until this article appeared in the Register UK, I was relatively unaware of. It’s a black eye for the firm who should have caught and cleaned this malware. It’s not like it was Whale or the Morris worm (sorry, feeling snarky). After all, they should have known about it been able to clean it. It’s only been around for over a decade.
I know it sounds like I’m ranting. I’m not. I’m just amused.
UPDATE:
Bullguard contacted The Register to point out that although the firm’s software failed to remove the virus it had in fact detected the presence of the ancient malware on the affected Vista machines.
(Thanks Martin)
OK so, that begs the next question. How did this malware get there in the first place?
More on this from VirusList: Link
Tags: Vista Virus, Stoned Virus, Malware, Bullguard
