Apple ships iPod with Windows viruses

Something tells me that we’ve found the week’s top story. Start the countdown for the pundits decrying another Apple “security flaw.”

Apple has announced that some iPods with video shipped after September 12th contain a Windows virus called RavMonE.exe. The number of iPods affected is very small—around 1%, and Apple has only received around 25 reports thus far. iPod nanos and shuffles are not affected by the prooblem.

As it’s a Windows virus, OS X machines are immune, but if you’re using your new iPod with Windows, Apple is recommending that you run Anti-Virus software such as McAfee, Norton Anti-Virus, or Microsoft OneCare to remove the virus, and then reformat the iPod using iTunes 7’s software restore functionality. As the virus is older and well known, up-to-date anti-virus should have no trouble removing it, but it does spread to other mass storage devices, so you should scan all volumes that have recently been attached to your computer, such as flash drives, digital cameras, and external hard drives. Apple also suggests that Mac users may wish to restore their iPod software, just to make sure that their music players are not vectors for carrying the virus.

Is this a serious threat that we should be concerned about? Probably not; as we said, the number of iPods affected seems very low. Still, it’s a source for viruses that many people would not think about; there’s an illusion of safety that comes with any electronics device that you buy that makes you feel as though it’s totally trustworthy, when in fact there are risks (as McDonald’s has shown), low though they may be.

Apple also offered an apology and a dig to its major platform rival: “As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.”

[via Playlist]