Channel Register

Hackers debut malware loaded USB ruse

Anonymous Coward

reminds me of this from last year 

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95556&WT.svl=column1_1

John Boyarsky

I want a free one 

I want a free USB Stick! Where can I find one of these.

Seriously now I'd just load it into my G5 & erase it.

Who'd be stupid enough to run anything off a found USB stick?

I mean Id look for good naughty pics or something.

John

Matt Haswell

One word : autorun 

I looked into this myself a while ago in order to better secure systems - you must at least disable autorun to be secure on a Windows box. Although most USB sticks won't autorun, this is just due to a hardware bit setting. Just grab one of the Microsoft USB sticks from a tradeshow or the U3 ones you can buy and they are set to autorun - you then just have to set up a normal CD autorun and put it on the stick. Easy!

I imagine there is a way to get it to autorun on Macs too - anyone comment? Just like those CD's that some magazines used to have that would run on Windows or Macs.

Of course, you could just put a tempting exe on the stick anyway like "HR Salary Records.exe" and that would probably do it anyway. Just have it throw up a failure due to lack of some special software, meanwhile installing the trojan in the background.