Creative's Japanese arm has apparently shipped several thousand of its Zen Neeon players infected with the Wullik.B worm. The affected players have serial numbers between 230528000001 and 1230533001680.

Details of the issue were posted only on the company's Japanese Web site. The problem is localized to the Asia-Pacfic region as the player has not been publicly released elsewhere.

Antivirus companies say the risk of a Neeon infecting a user's computer is low, as the worm would have to be physically copied to a hard drive from the player. However, it remains unclear as to how the units were infected with a virus in the first place; Creative has offered no explanation.

One possible reason for the virus could be that at some point in production a computer system was infected with the worm. When an image was made to put the operating system onto the Neeon, the virus was likely copied along with it.

The worm poses no risk to the player as the Neeon does not run on the Windows operating system itself. No reports of infections have been received as a result of the virus.

Security companies also say that when an MP3 player is connected to a system, it is treated as another hard drive. Thus, normal anti-virus programs will detect the virus and prevent infection.