USB drives left in car park as corporate espionage attack vector

A number of infected USB flash drives were recently left in the car park of Dutch chemical firm DSM in a failed corporate espionage attempt. According to a reportDutch language link from Dutch newspaper Dagblad De Limburger, these drives were planted by an unknown party in hopes that one or more of the company's employees would insert them into their office systems.

However, instead of plugging it into one of the company's systems, an employee who found one of the USB sticks turned it over to DSM's IT department. Upon examination, they discovered that the drives contained malware that was set to automatically run upon being inserted into a computer. The malware is said to have been a key logger designed to capture usernames and passwords, and access the company network to send them to an external site.