Defending against social engineering should be a top priority

It has emerged that malware loaded onto a USB flash drive led to the worst U.S. military breach ever. And though the recently declassified event took place some two years back, it probably comes as no surprise that an unrelated report from PandaLabs identified one quarter of all worms as spreading via infected USB storage devices.

While it is tempting to point the finger at Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) or security companies, the truth is that Windows 7 no longer launches executables upon the insertion of new flash media. So how could such a large percentage of infections still be caused by the use of USB storage devices? My theory is this: Users are still launching applications without regard to the dangers; and are either being tricked or cajoled into doing so. Read more...

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