A Secret Service agent inserted a USB drive infected with malware into his laptop [title truncated]

Business Insider ^ | April 8, 2019 | liza Relman

[BTerclinger]

“Something doesn’t sound right. Her cover story is TOO thin to be a rel spy.”

decoy.

[trebb]

Yep...there’s a reason we have IT folks and they have machines isolated from other machines to analyze such things...

[wally_bert]

One would hope.

This comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aApTVqeGJMw

[USCG SimTech]

Only a professional using a professionally set up machine with zero outside world comms including anything wireless like keyboards or mice, never mind WiFi or bluetooth, should be used to attempt such an investigation. The evidence is often self-destructive upon first access.

[taxcontrol]

The problem is a lack of skills. The cyber security industry will fail to fulfill an estimated 250K positions this year. This leads to a situation where a beginning cyber security person can easily get $90 to $100 K. Compare that to GS-9 or even GS-11. The top end of the market would be about $150K for a multi-year experienced penetration tester or forensics investigator. Banks are paying $200 to $250 for executive / CISO level positions.

[taxcontrol]

The problem is a lack of skills. The cyber security industry will fail to fulfill an estimated 250K positions this year. This leads to a situation where a beginning cyber security person can easily get $90 to $100 K. Compare that to GS-9 or even GS-11. The top end of the market would be about $150K for a multi-year experienced penetration tester or forensics investigator. Banks are paying $200 to $250 for executive / CISO level positions.

[Svartalfiar]

Is it possible to load the equivalent of an autoexec.bat file on a thumb drive and have it start executing without any action by the user?

No. The user has to plug it in to the computer. But that's all it can take.

[zeugma]

You are correct - up to a point. But it looks to me that some sort of AutoPlay must be toggled ON for a USB device to begin execution on insertion. This’s an Operating System function.

That assumes the device itself doesn't have any computational abilities. These days that simply is not a given.

[ptsal]

Agent Samuel Ivanovich testified in court on Monday that he put the thumb drive into his own computer, and it began installing files in a "very out-of-the-ordinary" way. He quickly stopped his analysis of the drive, the Miami Herald reported.

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Knucklehead Ivanovich!