US Army bans USB devices to contain worm
Thursday, November 20. 2008
Unfriendly fire
The US Army has reportedly suspended the use of USB and removable media devices after a worm began spreading across its network.
Use of USB drives, floppy discs, CDs, external drives, flash media cards and all other removable media devices has been placed on hold in order to contain the spread of Agent-BTZ, a variant of the SillyFDC worm, Wired reports. Such a temporary ban would cause inconvenience in any organization, but for the US military it's an even more serious problem because in many locations email or online transfer of files are not viable options.
The clampdown applies to both the the secret SIPR and unclassified NIPR networks, according to internal Army emails cited by Wired. Variants of the the SillyFDC worm are capable of spreading over networks or removable media devices, infecting any Windows PC they are plugged into or any external drive connected to an infected device, for example. The malware is programmed to download secondary infectious code from the internet, establishing a conduit that might be used to download keylogging software, password-siphoning spyware or botnet agents onto compromised machines.
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