Foodstore Aldi selling laptops with free virus

From the category "old viruses never die", we bring you laptops with free virus at Aldi. Just when you thought boot sector viruses were extinct:

Confirming posts in various forums there is indeed a part of the production of Medion MD 96290 Laptops, that were sold at the Food Discounter Aldi in Germany last week, that are infected with the Boot Virus Stoned.Angelina. In a document on their danish website (in danish) Medion describes the incident and provides instructions how to remove the virus.

To make it clear, the name of the virus has got absolutely nothing to do with any famous Hollywood Star! Stoned.Angelina is a Boot Virus that infects the bootsector of floppies and the MBR of hard drives, it doesn’t actually have a payload and was first discovered early in 1994. That was a time when the descriptions of the few viruses known where still in a printed Virus Encyclopaedia…

How it could happen to get the Laptops that have Microsoft Vista preinstalled infected with this ancient boot virus remains a bit of a mystery. The only way to infect a hard disk with a boot virus is by actually booting from an infected floppy. Nothing I’d expect to be done nowadays when installing Vista… (McAfee Avertlabs)