“The USB drives are believed to be extremely harmful and members of the public are urged to avoid plugging them into their computers or other devices”, the police stated.
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It is unknown at this stage what the fraudulent media streaming service offers or other serious issues are, or what state the USB drives leave the computer in after insertion. Apparently random USBs don’t just appear in Australia.
The virus infected the internal network of computers running Windows, and attacked Siemens industrial control software in order to over-ride the system. Earlier this year, an experiment run by the University of IL concluded that USB-based attacks succeed between 45% and 98% of the time.
Earlier this year, a group of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign conducted an experiment in which they scattered 297 USB flash drives across campus.
“We need to better understand the dynamics of social engineering attacks, develop better technical defenses against them, and learn how to effectively teach end users about these risks”. People will connect the drives to their computers without considering the potential consequences. Part of the problem is that few computer users are aware that USB devices can host infections.
Without even knowing what they are, the unlucky recipients have been plugging the tiny drives into their computers and infecting themselves with unsafe software.
Police are urging anyone with information about the people behind the scam to contact Crime Stoppers.
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