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Worm Attack Prompts DoD To Ban Use of External Media
An anonymous reader writes "The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVDs [...] The attack came in the form of a global virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks."
There's no way you can automatically run code on a Linux computer by inserting a USB flash drive. It's just not possible. Those virus happen only because of Yet Another Windows Design Mistake - autorun.inf files that run executables.
This has been a problem for years. Make a program that deletes all the files in a system. Put it into a CD along with a autorun.inf file. Burn the CD, don't write anything on it, and leave it near the office of someone you hate. At some point the guy will insert the CD just to check what's there. Boom. The virus will run automatically as soon as the CD is inserted.
And there're more posibilities, like making a virus executable have a carpet icon. Since Windows hides extensions by default, people will double click the virus because they will think it's a carpet.
These things can't happen in Linux (well, not really true, they can happen thanks to the shitty .desktop files that get "interpreted" by file managers even if they don't have execution +x permissions)
Why is everything in Windows managed by tools that do not come with the default installation?
I can perfectly manage a Linux installation without 3rd party or "optional" tools found on some website. Windows requires X tools that provide basic functionality on their site, and not default on the CD.
I hate that.