Second-hand USB drives riddled with malware, Sophos finds
Two thirds of a random assortment of USB flash drives bought second-hand at an Australian rail company lost property auction turned out to be infected with malware, security company Sophos has reported.
Despite being light-hearted and not particularly scientific, the survey offers an alarming insight into the insecure working life of the average USB drive, at least as far as suburban Australia is concerned.
The company purchased three bags of drives at auction, 57 in total, lost on the Rail Company New South Wales network, at a cost of $409 (£268) Australian dollars; 50 drives turned out to be in working order. After noting that the same drives could be bought for roughly half that sum when new, Sophos analysed the contents of the working units, which had a median FAT capacity of 2GB. Astoundingly, 33 of the 50 drives contained malware, with one drive containing four different types of malware.
