Olympus has issued a warning to customers who bought the relatively new Stylus Tough 6010 shockproof and waterproof camera, informing them that their new cameras may have come with surprise malware on the internal XD cards.
The malware can"t actually infect the camera itself, but it is similar to the Samsung Wave which shipped last year with malware on its internal memory. The malware found on the internal memory card uses autorun to automatically launch itself and infect the PC it"s attached to.
Apparently not all the cameras are infected though, only around 1700 are affected - you can check this through entering your serial number into a form on the companies website, although it is in Japanese. In the warning, Olympus said it "humbly apologises" and is looking to improve its quality control procedures in the future.
In the blog post by Sophos, the company says that "With such a long history of incidents like this, more companies need to wake up to the need for better quality control to ensure that they don"t ship virus-infected gadgets. At the same time, consumers should learn to always ensure Autorun is disabled, and scan any device for malware, before they use it on their computer."