What is old is new again. Over the past few months there has been a resurgence in the use of an old technique used by cyber criminals to compromise your computer and the other devices you connect to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How it works: The criminal leaves a USB thumbdrive or a CD in a commonly traveled area where it is likely to be discovered. Someone picks it up and, out of a desire to identify the owner or just curiosity, inserts it into a computer. The thumbdrive or CD, of course, is loaded with malware, which then installs itself on the computer. The malware is now ready to carry out whatever malicious activities it was created to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just recently, an investigation discovered that this technique was used to compromise computers in government offices and within corporations. Astonishingly, the compromise lasted about a decade. Ten years of data theft. Think about all that data loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similar incidents are now popping up from time to time. When the USB thumbdrives or CDs are discovered, they are turned into the security guards or staff at the front desk of the facility hoping the rightful owner will come in and ask if anyone has turned them in. The security guard and staff looking to identify the rightful owner will put them into the computer station at the front desk and the system becomes compromised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is far more common an occurrence than most people are aware. While most organizations have developed policies and procedures addressing this issue, the general user community forgets because it is rare that reinforcement of common security threat and practices take place. As for the security guard, many are employees of contracted service providers and have not been training to deal with this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is time to reinforce the security training about this technique and communicate the danger associated with found USB drives and CDs. When in doubt, you should call your IT security department and inform them about what you found, when you found it, and the specific location where the devices was discovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cyber criminals are returning to an old technique for loading malware onto your system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":25506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":130,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[16,130,24,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[858,888],"class_list":["post-23988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-networks","category-net-defense-blogs","category-opinion","category-the-compass"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"PPVCTKL5AZBJ5AYHDCYRE5RJBM","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/the-compass\/net-defense-blogs\/2015\/05\/17\/coleman-beware-of-found-memory-media\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n