Well, the students are back. For us security officers, it’s a love-hate relationship – you love ‘em because they’re young and enthusiastic and they help pay your salary, but you hate ‘em because they bring all kinds of malware to campus. So it’s no surprise that as soon as the semester began I started getting reports of malware spreading via USB flash drives, the first of which was reported by IT support staff who helped students in the residence halls.
To date, we have submitted to Trend Micro three different examples of malware found on USB flash drives at K-State, and in all cases Trend had a solution within 2-3 hours. However, much damage can occur in the time it takes that solution to be distributed to all computers on campus, so something more needs to be done.
To prevent infection by a USB flash drive, I STRONGLY encourage EVERYONE to disable autorun/autoplay on your Windows computers. Continue reading “Malware spread by USB flash drives, hitting campus again”
