The software itself is disguised as a "toolbar" that car owners would need to download in order to see their crime and atone. But it's actually another trojan horse virus, one that installs endless popup windows and fake "antivirus" software and all that other garbage. It would be clever if it weren't so horribly, horribly mean. But as this technique is being used in something called Grand Forks, North Dakota, couldn't the punks be caught? After all, somebody's gotta be running around slapping fake tickets on random windshields, and how many people could there really be in Grand Forks? Eight? Nine? [Jalopnik]

1184 B.C.: During the Trojan War, the Greeks depart in ships, leaving behind a large wooden horse as a victory offering. It is hauled inside the walls of Troy, and Greek soldiers descend from the horse's belly after dark to slay the guards and commence destruction of the city.

"We can't decipher it," says Joerg Ziercke, President of the BKA, Germany's Federal Police Office. "That's why we're talking about source telecommunication surveillance — that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted." He does not, however, advocate that the Talinn-based internet company gave law enforcers its encryption keys.

"There are no discussions with Skype," he continued, stating that he had no interest in harming a company's competitiveness. "I don't think that any provider would go for that." He did, however, express the need for his country's law enforcement agencies to be able to conduct online searches of suspects' hard drives using Trojan Horse spyware, but he stressed that these cases were rare.

"We currently have 230 proceedings related to suspected Islamists," Ziercke said. "I can imagine that in two or three of those we would like to do this." [i4u and VoIP News]

The internal investigation by the contract manufacturer determined that the virus was accidentally transferred by one of its employees and not a malicious act.

Reuters reported that it was a Seagate disk discovered in Taiwan, but the truth is, the Maxtor Basics 3200 (aka PS 3200) is available all over the world, and the infected lot made its way to many regions including China, Russia and the Middle East. Our source confirmed that the problem was discovered internally almost two months ago, and only boiled over last week when the Taiwanese government got mad at China:

In late September, Seagate discovered that a virus had been introduced to one of our retail products from one contract manufacturer. Seagate put an immediate stop to the production line and quarantined the facility until we could confirm that all drives leaving the factory were free of the virus.

Maxtor explains that the extent of damage of the Chinese-made Trojan-horse was minor:

Investigation...showed it was a threat to gaming passwords only and that a virus scan...would rid the drive—and any system attached to it—of the virus. Also, there have been some references to the virus deleting MP3s. Although it is a minor inaccuracy, this is also incorrect. The original suspicion out of Kaspersky Labs was that MP3s were being deleted by the virus, but tests have since proved that it does not.

• Test software verifies that each PS 3200 unit contains no files in the root directory and no files are hidden in the system files. The PS 3200 product line does not ship with any software.
• The PS 3200 test procedure has been updated to run each unit through three separate anti-virus software applications (Norton, McAfee, and Kaspersky Labs). Previously testing was conducted with one anti-virus application.
• Seagate has strictly limited employees access to the test PCs; all employees must now pass through metal detectors.

Metal detectors sound pretty hardcore, but I for one am satisfied. Hopefully other companies with similar manufacturing vulnerabilities will learn from Seagate's little misadventure. [Maxtor Basics 3200]

I do not have clear reasons and I can't blaim the little headache I had at the time. I just had to realize the idea I had after seeing the PSP variant of a bricker. The files do not come with any form of name/signature of me, a thing I would do if it could be trusted. I won't release any more of this crap for DS and I don't think parts of this trojan or the idea itself will emerge in future homebrew releases. The point is probably clear. Do not run any form of untrusted code that just suddenly appears without any name.

He's not proud of the $6.66 donation someone gave him, or for kicking everyone out of bed in the morning without so much as breakfast or pat on the ass. But he wants to be very clear that he was not carrying any viruses, so you've got nothing to worry about unless you mess around with unofficial Nintendo software.

DarkFader Issues Apology Over Nintendo DS Trojan [NDS Updates]