(Credit:
U.S. Navy)
The U.S. Department of Defense ban on USB thumb drives instated nearly a year ago will eventually be partially lifted to allow authorized people to use official flash drives for mission-critical functions, according to a top military official.
"In the future, we expect that a government-owned and procured USB flash media, that is uniquely and electronically identifiable for use in support of mission-essential functions on DoD networks, will be permitted for use by authorized individuals," Robert Carey, chief information officer for the Department of the Navy, wrote in his blog recently.
"We are working on upgraded antivirus and malware detection, alert and eradication capabilities, as well as implementation of controls to deny network access to unauthorized USB flash media and revised operating procedures for scanning and cleaning flash media," he wrote. "The bottom line is, the days of using personally owned flash media or using flash media collected at conferences or trade shows are long gone."
Thumb drives, CDs, and other removable storage devices were banned last November after military computers became infected with a worm that was partially spread by thumb drives.
The thumb drive ban has been inconvenient for military personnel who used them for carrying tech manuals, medical records of wounded troops, mission plans, and other types of important information, according to DefenseNews.
USB thumb drives are convenient, popular and often free--and they're spreading viruses like sailors on shore leave.*
The US-CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) issued a warning on Thursday that malicious code is increasingly propagating via USB flash drive devices.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense has temporarily banned the use of thumb drives, CDs, and other removable storage devices because of the spread of the Agent.bzt virus, a variant of the SillyFDC worm, according to Wired.
We've seen this before with portable external storage devices. Floppy disks were the culprit in the early 1990s, followed by CDs. The fact that USB thumb drives are being used by so many people makes them an attractive target for virus writers.
"The bad guys are intentionally developing new flavors of malware designed to propagate through USB devices," said Gunter Ollmann, chief security strategist for IBM's ISS security division. "They are today's floppy drives."
(Credit:
CNET News/James Martin)
But USB drives are even handier. Their small size makes them easy to slip into a pocket or carry on a lanyard around your neck. A common swag item in the tech industry, they also are mainstream consumer storage devices. They literally litter my desk drawers.
There are a couple of ways USB thumb drives can be used to spread viruses and other malicious software.
... Read more
- prev
- 1
- next
