‘Free’ USB Drives Defeat Company Security

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This is an excellent case of Social Engineering, you could also consider it playing on human greed/ignorance/stupidity.

Whatever you want to label it really ;)

USB drives are a real security risk..

We recently got hired by a credit union to assess the security of its network. The client asked that we really push hard on the social engineering button. In the past, they’d had problems with employees sharing passwords and giving up information easily. Leveraging our effort in the report was a way to drive the message home to the employees.

The client also indicated that USB drives were a concern, since they were an easy way for employees to steal information, as well as bring in potential vulnerabilities such as viruses and Trojans. Several other clients have raised the same concern, yet few have done much to protect themselves from a rogue USB drive plugging into their network.

They had to think up something a little different though as they had to bait employees that were already on high alert as they knew they were being audited.

I made my way to the credit union at about 6 a.m. to make sure no employees saw us. I then proceeded to scatter the drives in the parking lot, smoking areas, and other areas employees frequented.

Once I seeded the USB drives, I decided to grab some coffee and watch the employees show up for work. Surveillance of the facility was worth the time involved. It was really amusing to watch the reaction of the employees who found a USB drive. You know they plugged them into their computers the minute they got to their desks.

The stats are amazing, out of 20 drives, 15 were found…out of the 15 found ALL FIFTEEN were plugged into company computers.

A neat way to get in eh, next time you are asked to push the social engineering buttons during a penetration test or vulnerability assessment perhaps you can do this.

All you need is a few cheap USB drives and a custom trojan.

Source: Dark Reading