A Lot of People Carelessly Plug In Random USB Drives Into Their Computers (vice.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have proven that a lot of people will carelessly plug in a USB drive found on the ground, exposing themselves to potential infections from malware. The researchers dropped 297 USB flash drives on a university campus and saw that in 48% of the cases, people picked them up, plugged them in, and opened files from the drive on their computers. Should such people be mocked? Would you plug in a USB drive that you found on the ground? Bruce Schneier, an American cryptographer, computer security and privacy specialist makes a good point: People get USB sticks all the time. The problem isn't that people are idiots, that they should know that a USB stick found on the street is automatically bad and a USB stick given away at a trade show is automatically good. The problem is that the OS trusts random USB sticks. The problem is that the OS will automatically run a program that can install malware from a USB stick. The problem is that it isn't safe to plug a USB stick into a computer.

Comments

I do the same thing with my penis

[Anonymous Coward]

Never know what STDs are there, but YOLO

Re:I do the same thing with my penis

[Xenx]

As this is Slashdot, I imagine your hand has been monogamous. Risk of STDs should be low.

OS designers, not the customers are stupid.

[gurps_npc]

1) Given: People will take a random USB stick and plug it into a computer.

2) Conclusion: Only a moron will design an Operating system that automatically runs software on a USB stick. Any sane OS designer should declare all USB sticks to be suspect, and require an explicit confirmation before running any executable on it.

The minimal convenience of having auto-run for USB drives is far over-ridden by the huge security leak.

Design products for the people that will run it, not theoretical angels that will read and obey your instruction manuals - especially when they DO NOT COME WITH INSTRUCTION MANUALS anymore.

Re:Is this still true?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, malicious USB devices pretended to be CD readers because Windows would auto-run CDs but not mass storage (see U3, for supposedly non-malicious exploitation of this fact)

Then Windows started prompting the user before auto-run from CD drives also.

So now malicious USB devices present themselves as a keyboard and start typing commands (including hotkeys such as Win+R) to download and run malware off the net. USB keyboards can even interact with UAC prompts, even when presented on the Secure Desktop where software input emulation has no effect.

USB keyboard. Your computer DOES run the commands

[raymorris]

You assume that USB stick is a flash memory device. Being nasty, it tells the computer that it's a keyboard. Your computer almost certainly processes keyboard commands just like other computers do. I've built one of these.