Temporary bans on the use of USB Drive

Fears of infection by a virus led the US DoD to ban the use of flash drives.

To most people the USB stick is a humble, innocuous device that does nothing more than help them tote around their most important files.

But to the US Department of Defense (DoD), the USB stick has a dark side - one that criminally-minded hackers are only too eager to exploit.

In late November, the US DoD imposed a temporary ban on the use of flash drives and other removable, recordable media such as CDs, DVDs and floppy disks. The ban applied to users of both the classified and unclassified networks the US military operates.

The order was sent out to help the security staff at the DoD combat the spread of a Windows worm - a self-propagating program. In this case the malicious program was a variant of the SillyFDC worm known as Agent.btz.

This lurks unseen on USB drives and only springs to life when an infected flash drive is inserted into an uninfected PC.

Once installed, the worm does not sit dormant. Instead, it downloads code from elsewhere on the net and stays in touch with its creators.

To scupper the chance that criminals could be using its network resources, the DoD slapped a ban on the use of USB sticks.

But, said Tim Ellsmore, chief executive of security firm 3ami, those restrictions could make it harder for people to get their jobs done.

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