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Don't buy that used memory stick!
David Heath
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 12:38
Page 1 of 2
A recent 'purchasing raid' on Sydney's RailCorp lost property auction yielded 50 memory sticks, 66% of which contained malware.
Two immediate outcomes were clear.
Firstly, that two thirds of the sticks were afflicted with some kind of malware (the worst affected stick had six different infections). This probably means that you would either be infected by simply inserting the stick in your computer (although less likely now that Microsoft has disabled AutoRun in a recent patch) or definitely infected by opening a malicious file.
You DO have up-to-date anti-virus running, don't you?
Of course the second outcome is that Sophos technicians gained access to an absolute plethora of information regarding a large number of 'innocent' people.
Ducklin reports that they discovered, "4443 directly accessible files on the 50 devices including 2882 images, 629 source code files, 197 web files, 145 documents, 128 programs and 23 videos."
In addition, the files included:
- Lists of tax deductions.
- Minutes of an activists' meeting.
- School and University assignments.
- AutoCAD drawings of work projects.
- Photo albums of family and friends.
- A CV and job application.
- Software and web source code.
So, think about it - what if the person buying these memory sticks was not a security researcher, but an identity thief instead?
You think you have a disaster recovery plan?
Think again. Most businesses only have PART of a DR plan - and this spells business disaster in the event of an IT disaster.
Download The Seven Sins of Disaster Recovery White Paper now and find out how you can prevent this happening to you.
