virus possible on RED media?

[Michael Borlace]

Have almost finished looking through Reduser forums and haven't seen any posts about viruses on red media. I didn't think about this until I was on the Dvxuser website and one person had a post about a Trojan virus that infected his P2 cards. Can red media get viruses and malware or is there some engineering design to prevent this?

 

[Scott Crawley]

Any media, by virtue of it's function can be used to transport a virus. The question you seem to be asking is, Is the hardware/ software in the camera susceptible. I don't know the answer to that, but know this; the cam communicates via wifi... Media cards are not strictly necessary to introduce a virus or subvert the system.

 

[Patrick S. Marshall]

It is basically a 'normal' SSD afaik. It has its own form factor and REDspecific connectors for the needed data transfer rates, but other than that, it is a normal HD. You could store games, music or anything else on it. So yes, it could carry a Virus, just like any other writeable media... But it is unlikely that someone would write a Virus that attacks RED equipment - not impossible, but unlikely.

 

[Andrew M.]

Actually you touched very important subject.

With all these removable media being plugged and unplugged on the set and in the labs watch where you are plugging your “stick”,
the USB one I mean
Also watch who is plugging his stick in your interface.



If you plug your SSD and it gets mounted as a removable hard disk on your computer it may carry and spread some type of viruses.

If your computer is infected with boot virus or other virus that looks for removable media to spread and you use any type of removable media on your computer and then someone else will use the same removable media that were used on your computer you may spread the virus from your computer to this other computer.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/se...malware-five-ways-to-avoid-the-same-fate/4335

It has nothing to do and it is not specific to RED SSD. It is spreading through any removable media that are not protected by your antivirus protection.

The best to avoid such trouble is to keep your operating system up to date in terms of security updates.

Otherwise the most important prevention is to Disable Autorun on your system.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715

As per article above:
#1 Disable AutoRun
#2 Implement restrictive removable media policy
#3 Check all removable media on a secured system before use
#4 Choose to ban all removable media
#5 Implement the basics

 

[David Barlow]

I always thought that re-formatting disks was an effective way to remove virus's since it erases all data. You re-format the SSD's every time you start a new roll so wouldn't that reduce the potential effects of virus infection?

 

[Yaque Silva-Doyle]

mac

 

[Patrick S. Marshall]

I always thought that re-formatting disks was an effective way to remove virus's since it erases all data. You re-format the SSD's every time you start a new roll so wouldn't that reduce the potential effects of virus infection?

I am not sure if a constant reformatting is such a good idea (albeit it is standard practice). AFAIK is the one big problem of SSD the same as for SDs. Each sector can only be written on for a finite number of times before the sector gets bad. To battle this, there is a memory system integrated that spreads data as equal as possible, to minimize the times one specific sector will be written on again. But this data, I think, is deleted once the disk is formatted, making the first few sectors more prone to erosion. I might be wrong with this though. But if I am right, deleting all the data might be a better choice (quick format might do the trick, because it just deletes the first bit of a sector, making it appear empty while it is not). Maybe this problem has been solved meanwhile and I just missed it, but I usually just delete (especially true for SD Cards) what's on them.

mac

You mean unix based systems with candy looks? There are even viruses for these systems. They are just rare... And malware, trojans etc are not at all uncommon, but Apple is usually very quick about it.

 

[Scott Crawley]

I thought that most re-formats were simply directory deletes. To actually remove code from media, it must be over written. Only a secure erase over writes blocks, no?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Every time you format an SSD you wipe any possibility of Viruses. You rarely plug an SSD into more than one computer and nobody knows what RED runs on to bother infecting it with a virus. And most studios aren't connected to the internet. There's no profit or attack vector. In other words, nothing to worry about.

 

[Michael Ou]

Barring any sort of industrial espionage/sabotage, or FUD campaign launched by competitors, I see no reason why a virus programmer would choose to target a RED camera platform. It's a little too industry specific, like writing a virus to attack a particular piece of medical equipment.
But to be safe, all my hardware is dedicated anyway, in other words, I'm not using my web surfing machines for work, that's what my little disposable netbook is for.