Dell is contacting some of its PowerEdge R310, R410, 510 and T410 server customers to tell them that the flash storage on their systems’ motherboards is infected with a W32.Spybot worm and that they didn’t catch the damn thing from the wild, the mobos came pre-infected.

It swears they didn’t come that way from its factories and that the problem is limited to replacement motherboards sent out by Dell’s service folks.

It estimates that “the maximum potential exposure is less than 1% of these server models.” It also says that the spyware is only a security threat to servers running Windows and then only under certain circumstances like not running an antivirus.

It claims that “to date we have received no customer reports related to data security,” which is not exactly consoling since it might not set off an alarm. It’s impossible to tell since Dell says nothing about any symptoms of contagion.

It does say it’s decontaminated its stock and that any new boards supplied from here on out will be clean but otherwise offers no remedies. It also does not identify the flash supplier or say where along the supply chain it thinks the infection occurred.

See http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/t/19339458.aspx.