Your Replacement Dell PowerEdge Motherboard May Have Malware

Dell has issued a warning to all of the business consumers that several of the companies replacement motherboards for their PowerEdge servers could potentially be infected with malware.

Apparently the issue does not affect any Dell PowerEdge servers shipped directly from Dell's factories rather it's limited to a small number of the replacement motherboards which were sent via Dell’s service and replacement process for four server models: PowerEdge R310, PowerEdge R410, PowerEdge R510 and PowerEdge T410.

Dell's Matt McGinnis has posted more details on the Dell Support forum thread here with many more details being posted on this post. The company promises it will continue to update this main server forum thread. Beyond the discussion forum, concerned customers are urged to contact Dell's server support team.

The malware has been identified as the W32.Spybot worm and was discovered in flash storage on the motherboard during Dell testing. The malware does not reside in the firmware as previously thought. Dell is assuring consumers that all industry-standard antivirus programs on the market today have the ability to identify and prevent the code from infecting the customer’s operating system which is limited to Windows based operating systems only.