Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Thursday pulled a printer driver from its website after security vendor BitDefender reported that the software was infected with the same computer virus that infected HP’s drivers more than five years ago.A BitDefender partner notified the security vendor of the infected driver software on Wednesday, and the company’s security researchers soon determined that it had the same Funlove virus that had plagued HP in December 2000.The infected printer driver was removed from HP’s website early Thursday, said BitDefender spokesman Vitor Souza.Until then, the virus was being distributed with the Korean version of the Windows 95/98 driver for HP’s Officejet g85 All-in-One printer. HP no longer sells the all-in-one printer, and the current antivirus products are able to block it. So while the oversight is an embarrassment for HP, it’s unlikely that many users were affected by Funlove. Previously, HP had inadvertently distributed the Funlove virus in Japanese printer drivers that were made available on the company’s website. Souza believes that HP most likely neglected to remove this particular infected driver back in 2000. “Its just like nobody had run a test against antivirus [software],” he said.Even for users who fall prey to the virus, the consequences are not severe. When it gets installed, the Funlove pops up a text message that reads “Fun Loving Criminal,” and then attempts to reboot the PC. On Windows NT machines, it attempts to change system settings so that files that can normally be seen only by administrators are visible to all.HP executives were not immediately available to comment for this story.BitDefender is owned by Softwin SRL, based in Bucharest, Romania.-Robert McMillan, IDG News Service Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe