A new study found that nearly half of people who find a USB stick in the parking lot will plug it into their computers.
Researchers from Google, the University of Illinois, and the University of Michigan "threw" 297 USB drives around the Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, and found that 48 percent of USBs were connected to a computer, minutes later.
"The security community has long believed that users can be victims of Social Engineering attacks by picking up and connecting seemingly 'lost' USB flash drives," the researchers said.
"Unfortunately, whether out of altruistic motives or human curiosity, the user unknowingly opens a door to a attack when it connects the drive. A natural Trojan horse.”
For the study the researchers used USB sticks containing archives HTML με ενσωματωμένα img tags. Με το άνοιγμα των filesThe picture communicated with a remote server, allowing researchers to monitor the use of USB drives in the area.
USB sticks took a few minutes to a few hours to connect to computers.
In addition, the study found that only 16% of users bothered to scan the units with some anti-virus before opening it on their computers. 68% of respondents said they did not take any precautionary measures before joining units.
The users stated that for the most part they acted in good faith. 68% of users said they opened the removable disk to find their owner, and few of the respondents said they were planning to keep the USB.
