Small Number of Apple iPods Included Virus

Apple said Tuesday that it had discovered that a small number of its Video iPods shipped with a Windows virus installed on the player.

"Less than 1 percent" of the Video iPods sold after Sept. 12 were infected with the Windows RavMon.exe virus, Apple said.

"This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it," the company said in a statement posted to its support web pages. "So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

The virus is fairly easily removed with a conventional virus scanner, Apple said. However, the iPod must be connected during the scan.